Dark Adaptation: Dead Men Working
by Hickok
Summary: Dark Adaptation deleted chapter! Tsuzuki and Watari are roped into investigating a disturbance at the Tachiagari Library. But what awaits this pair of veteran Shinigami is like nothing they have ever seen… Set prior to the events of chapter three, DA.
1. Other Side

_**Dark Adaptation - Dead Men Working.**_

**DISCLAIMER:** Descendants of Darkness and all those that wander aimlessly do not belong to me. This may come as a surprise to you but I honestly do not own it. You can check yourself if you don't believe me. You won't find my name anywhere in either the manga or the anime credits, I can assure you!

**Note: **Just to clear up any misconceptions, this story is actually part of the overall Dark Adaptation series that I have been writing, though I consider it 'deleted footage' of sorts. However, it can stand alone in that you needn't have read Dark Adaptation to know what's going on in this particular storyline.

However, in reference to Dark Adaptation, this particular story takes place prior to Tsuzuki's reuniting with Muraki in chapter three. (To be specific, in chapter three, the time frame is early morning. The events of this story occur during the evening of the previous day, before Tsuzuki goes out on the town and gets off his face.) Back when I first started writing Dark Adaptation, I had a vague idea for chapter three that was actually this story but I went with an abbreviated version which would hurry along Tsuzuki meeting up with Muraki again. As of late, I decided that I would actually write these 'deleted chapters' and present them separate from the Dark Adaptation fic as a stand alone story. (Owing to its' size of course.) Readers should however think of this as an extension of chapter three of Dark Adaptation, as it delves into the Origins of the demon Mitkiel and his first 'appearance' to our Shinigami main characters!

_Dead Men Working_ is divided into seven parts. Part seven is the actual content of the original chapter three of Dark Adaptation, though it has been re-written along with the earlier chapters of DA. The reason I haven't updated as much recently, is because I have been re-writing DA, to make it more up to date, add more scenes and the like. If you want to know what has been added, I make note of it in my profile page. So far, only chapters one, two and three of DA have been replaced by the re-written versions, though chapter four will shortly follow!

I kind of think of this as an introductory chapter, which will fill people in who don't know much about Yami no Matsuei or its' characters.

I have added three new character's, all of whom appear in this revised chapter. The first is the Ministry psychiatrist, the second is Watari's assistant and the third is… well, it's really only a glimpse. You'll meet him in chapter 31, when I get round to posting that!

Phew, do you think I covered everything?

**Saki: Hard to say... (Checks clipboard) Did you mention that in DA you're going to replace the chapter with part seven that appears as part of this fic?**

**Hickok: Ah... no. Thanks for reminding me. Anyway, as he said readers.**

**Watari: Geez, what a long story... and it's so revolting!**

**Hickok: Not this first part! This is quite boring really. It's only Tsuzuki having his brain examined!**

**Tsuzuki: Poor me... Why is this even necessary, Hickok? I don't want the readers to view me as mental!**

**Hickok: Can't change what you are, dearie. And as for this story, I wanted to show the 'calm before the storm', so to speak. Explain the background and history of the Ministry and it's characters and show what they do in their line of work. And be honest mate; you really needed to see a psychiatrist after what happened in Kyoto.**

**Tsuzuki: (Sobs) Just because it's true doesn't mean you have to say it!**

**Muraki: How about some warnings for the later chapters then, Hickok?**

**Hickok: Cheers Muraki. (Adopts formal stance and puts on official voice) Warning; later parts of this fanfic involve scenes and images that may be considered violent or cruel.**

**Oriya: 'May' be considered? Come on, don't kid yourself around.**

**Hickok: (Sighs) Very well, be pedantic if you must. (Assumes stance and voice again) Later additions to this story include images that are violent, disturbing, gory and cruel to the extreme. If you get off on that, please ignore my warning and plow on through. I will give this warning again at the start of the actual chapter itself but I feel it's only fair to get the message out there early. This chapter is not so scary. Not unless you find exposition, backstories, wankst and internalizations frightening.**

**Hisoka: Most people do, Hickok. That's why they avoid stories like this and read only those that involve their favorite pairings. **

**Watari: Yep. The dirty, filthy porn.**

**Hickok: There's nothing wrong with that! I don't condemn them for how they get their jollies, so they won't condemn me for loving blood and guts and gore. With hot guys rolled in it... (Drools)**

**Tsuzuki: Okay, that's gross. I'm leaving. (Runs away)**

**Hickok: Now my lovely readers! This new (hopefully improved version) includes; Tsuzuki's visit to the ministry psychiatrist, heart to heart with Watari, massacre at the library and dinner with Hisoka. Up first, it's been a year since the events of Kyoto. How is everyone fairing at the Ministry of Hades? Shall we check up on them?**

**Hisoka: No.**

**I wasn't asking you! Anyway, hope you all enjoy it! XD**

**~ X ~**

_Do I really want to know myself  
Do I want to see  
Why I'm wonderin' every morning, who's it gonna be today  
Staring in the mirror, come tell me, who's that under my skin  
And what's the reason we're here for  
_

_Tell me what is my own true face  
Tell me what is my own true face  
_

_But hey here I come  
I'm the show's main attraction  
I'm a beautiful creature  
That's what I am, yeah that's what I am  
_

_But the other side of me  
I can't explain why I've become  
Negative as can be  
I'm wonderin' where it's coming from  
I know I can't do without it, sure makes me what I am  
So I will never stop believin'  
_

_In that I love myself someday  
In that I love myself someday  
_

_But hey here I come  
I'm the show's main attraction  
I'm a beautiful creature  
Yeah that's what I am, Hey that's what I am_

_**Anouk**_ – "The Other Side Of Me"

**~ X ~**

**The Other Side**

**Tsuzuki**

So that was the reason why you called me so early... I didn't think that anyone in their right mind had any business ringing a person in the early hours of the morning.

Though I suppose that sort of makes sense, when you think about it.

My part in this sordid tale begins both spectacularly and simplistically. Suppose we were to find ourselves in a more civilized setting, the four of us. Say that we partook of tea as we gazed out upon a serene landscape, beguiled by the sounds of the surrounding world, passing by us, as we instead remain cosseted in our reposed solitude. Imagine then, that I would say to you that this night, when everything ended for so many innocent people, was in fact the most perfect evening of which I had ever recounted and also by that vein, the very worst. I am certain you would be most confused by such words. 'Is it one or the other?' You must surely wonder. And I do admit that it hasn't quite yet begun to make sense to me either.

It all started with this incident. Three months that were to become a nightmare for all…

I'm sure that one day, people will forget and move on with their lives. But I will never forget it. It was pure terror… but… it was also the time in which my life was forever changed.

My life… huh… it's such a common phrase and yet for someone like myself to use it, it takes on a kind of painful irony.

I look back upon those days now, as some men must surely look back upon the entirety of their lives. I confess most humbly that I already am such a man but these past few weeks have aged us all, to the point where it seems impossible to imagine that anyone who has born witness to these times is young anymore. I feel as sea bream must, when the fisherman has slid the hook from its' gums. How often in life do we fail to understand that when the barb is pulled from our flesh a throbbing welt remains that may never satisfactorily heal? And even then you cannot help but wonder if you should find yourself splayed across the chopping board, awaiting the ascending blade that determines you demise, or if it is towards the welcoming water that you fall, where, bearing the scars of the old existence, life begins again.

Seventy years ago, I certainly could not have imagined my life having turned out like this. This existence of mine I've so often compared to a sweet perfume, dabbed upon the wrist of a long dead woman. For what end shall it ultimately serve?

And yet despite this unanswerable futility I had been granted life anew.

I am Asato Tsuzuki. Shinigami. A dead man walking. We might die today. For any one of us, there may perhaps be no return. And so, I would like for you to know me, the me I have never spoken to anyone of. I'm sorry if this is selfish but here and now, at the end and beginning of all things, there is, I feel, no better time then to tell you all the absolute, undeniable truth about me. I hope I can be forgiven for that.

**XxXxXxXxXx**

Nearly a year had passed now since the tragic loss of life during the incident in Kyoto. I'd since returned from the Shikigami world and reassumed my post as head of the Kyushu district. Weeks rolled by with only the standard soul retrieval missions on our agenda. In twelve months, we saw neither hide nor hair of Kazutaka Muraki, though the scars he had left upon Hisoka's flesh and my soul remained as grisly testament of his continued existence. It was, it seemed, only a matter of time until his re-emergence. And oh, how that time crawled.

Our workload was dwindling… the occurrence of unnatural deaths decreasing by the day. Most often, we'd sit about, twiddling our thumbs and catching up on case notes. When business was down for us, it was usually a good sign that things in the Waking world were doing okay.

The end of my struggle was in sight. Until one chilly, late summer evening…

**~ X ~**

The date was June 12, 2006. It was five o'clock on a Tuesday night, which was knock-off time. However, I had an obligation in the Northern section of the Ministry building at five-fifteen. Having bid farewell to my co-workers and reconfirming my dinner plans with my division partner Hisoka Kurosaki, I had only a moment to file away the paperwork I'd been in the midst of completing before heading out of the Summons Section.

It was a day of deep nostalgia… of familiar memories. A day when I felt compelled to take in each and every thing around me and absorb it, as though experiencing it all for the very first time. Looking back now, I can say with confidence that it was an untried sense of anticipation that assailed me that afternoon. The past year had been so blithesomely peaceful but to me it felt all too much like standing upon a plank of wood with a deep crack running through the center of it. Being aware of the damage already done to the foundations upon which your life rested, you could never entirely relax, when too much pressure could cause the entire board to break in two.

My mind had been irreversibly damaged by what had occurred in Kyoto. Even now an entire year later, the terrible images continued to haunt me. Day by day, I slowly, gradually improved but still that uncertainty dominated the way in which I lived my life. I'd become increasingly timid, fearful of taking chances or becoming attached to those individuals I met through my line of work. With the help of my chief and work colleagues, I was taking steps in an attempt to improve my anxiety but I wasn't yet sure if it was enough. That great anticipation… I felt if Muraki were to reappear, the board beneath my feet would be completely obliterated and ever downward I would plunge.

I grabbed my coat out of the staff locker room, slinging both it and my jacket over my arm, as it wasn't yet cold enough to put them on. I found my eyes drawn towards a glass display case on the wall to the left of the line of lockers, displaying a Ministry mass produced guide titled, '_Know your Demons.' _Demon, is the slang colloquial term for 'Underdwellers', the name given to those paranormal creatures residing in the dark mirror realm most commonly referred to as Hell. (Demonic entities find this manner of reference to have negative connotations however and as such prefer the alternative title of Underdwelling). Having never been there (and not planning to, if I could avoid it) I can only tell you what I myself have been told. It is referred to as the Underdwelling because of the oppressive dark atmosphere. Popular theology references the location of 'Hell' as being beneath the earth, which is of course physically impossible but it does apparently have the feeling of being submerged beneath the ground, with little light and a dank humidity in the air. Within the Underdwelling there exists in symbiosis, the Tartarus realm, where the wrongdoing souls of humanity are placed into one of the Seven levels coordinating to the offences committed whilst they were alive. If successful in working off their debt in one of these levels, they earn a chance at reincarnation and as such, a means through which to live their lives accordingly.

Underdwellers are the creatures that dwell in this realm. Most are harmless and exist without any sort of open communication between themselves and the Waking World. But problems did unfortunately occur, and on quite a disconcerting basis at that. It was unavoidable when you think about it. Owing to the overall oppressive sense of the Underdwelling, sometimes these 'citizens' evolved something of 'cabin fever' and became immeasurably volatile. These were 'demons'. If one of these nasties breaks into the Waking World, they can cause catastrophic damage due to their superior physical and magical abilities. That's where we Shinigami come in.

Next to the field guide, a number of articles about the Summons Section and Underdwellers had been laminated proudly, just to remind us of what an important job we were all doing. The Ministry annually produced an agency specific newspaper, detailing various staff achievements, upcoming work related events, articles of particular interest taken from earth newspapers and the like. It is such a large organization you understand, that often it is considered quite impossible to keep in touch with everything that is going on. This newspaper was sponsored as a means to improve staff communication.

Some of the earth articles passed more as comic strips for us, for we had a first hand understanding and account of what exactly was being dealt with in that particular circumstance. For example, one article bore the blazing headline, _"HOUSE REDUCED TO RUINS FOLLOWING UNSCHEDULED DEMOLITION!_" Well, it was certainly unscheduled, no lie there. The true story was that the abandoned building had been attracting a large number of Scavenger beasties from the Underdwelling and they had taken to feasting on the homeless people that were squatting there. Kannuki Wakaba and her partner Hajime Terazuma had totaled the house in their attempts to subdue the monsters in what came to be known as one of the Ministry's most famous comedy of errors mission. Having not been there, I couldn't tell you exactly what happened but I believe it was started by one of the Shinigami tripping down the stairs in an attempt to avoid an attack and sending a blast of _mana_ (magical energy) through the roof, causing a chunk of tiling to fall into a support beam, which in turn brought the right hand side of the building down... And the rest is very amusing history, of which the aforementioned agents are regularly reminded of at staff parties.

Another article detailed animal transfiguration, the desecration of the Catholic churches within the Tokyo Bay area and a corpse that had been delivered to the hospital morgue, only to disappear a dozen times throughout the night and routinely returned, having been found in a different location every time. (ID tag still firmly knotted about his big toe). This had in fact been one of _my_ cases and the truth was that the soul of the deceased person hadn't entirely left the body. He was an elderly fellow and all he wanted to do was get back to the bar in which he had been drinking during his heart attack and finish his beer but his sense of direction was in fact even more terrible now that he was deceased. It certainly gave the human authorities something to stew over, never mind the trouble I'd had convincing the silly old sod that he _was _in fact dead and not having an alcohol induced hallucination. For the love of God, the guy had been twiddling his ear lobe and the entire thing had come off in his hand and it still took ten more minutes for him to even consider the possibility that he was deceased! As you can imagine, this became something of a running comic in the Ministry paper; a caricature of me, trying to convince a very decrepit zombie (which had been munching on his own leg, which was quite the exaggeration) that it was time for him to turn up his toes.

Human beings don't know that paranormal entities really exist. (Not theoretically anyway. I'm sure one or two suspected but most of those had been locked up). It's tough keeping it all inside, but the Ministry is the Ministry… and rules are rules.

I grabbed up my personal belongings as I glanced over the tabloid articles, smiling to myself as I read over a few particularly humorous ones before locking up and making my way out into the main office area, switching off the lights as I went. The Summons Section was composed of a number of individual offices, so we weren't exactly pinched for space but the central area certainly gave that impression sometimes. Strictly speaking, it was well organized and stocked for general-purpose usage. We habitually gathered there on a Tuesday morning for the staff meeting of the entire Judgment Bureau area. The Summons Section staff held a very informal meeting on a Wednesday morning in our break area over breakfast, to which we all contributed something. I think I enjoyed these times most because if we at least pretended to be discussing relevant issues, those of us that were present could spend the morning chatting away and enjoying each others company. It certainly took the edge off of an unusually serious and stressful job.

I switched off all the lights in the main area, making sure the computer terminals had all been turned off as I headed towards the door. A plaque was mounted in a decorative frame to one side of the doorway, proudly detailing the founding principals of the department and its' employees. I couldn't actually remember the last time I'd bothered to read it, (or if I had at all,) so I stopped for a moment to refresh myself. As I said, I felt especially nostalgic that night and certain things I wouldn't normally have paid credence to become unaccountably important. Plus, I had a bit of time to kill.

**"Summons Section"**

"**Guiding the lost souls that wander the mortal world and dealing with unnatural disturbances that threaten to disrupt the natural commune."**

This was the department to which I had long ago been assigned. The Summons Department began as a team of agents gathered from within the Ministry of Hades, the Government responsible for dealing with the transition of departed souls. Ruled by the mysterious Lord Enma, it's the Ministries job to both wrangle in the dysfunctional dead and then to bring them to the Hades court, to receive judgment for their life's deeds. Other agents are then responsible for seeing them to either the Celestial Land (Colloquial term: Heaven) or the Underdwelling, where they will work towards repaying their debt, in the hopes of receiving another chance of life.

The Summons sections mission is to keep things running smoothly. Our charge is to retrieve any lost souls still wandering the mortal world. We also deal directly with those disturbances that might have caused the natural flow of the souls to become disrupted; such as demonic intervention or the ignorant (or not so ignorant) dalliances of humans. Each department of the Ministry sends investigation requests to the office, which are then examined before being forwarded on to the Summons Section. Special retrieval agents of the Summons Department are also known as Shinigami – Guardians of Death. In the Western based Ministries such as England and the United States of America, these agents were more popularly referred to as 'Reaper's' though our jobs are entirely the same. Every country in the world has an affiliated Ministry of Hades, which handles their own location bound errant dead. It is only very rarely that we have any contact with them; such is the strict cultural differences that determine how we go about our business. We Japanese, for example, often favor reincarnation as a choice move for uncertain souls, whereas the English prefer the dead to pass on directly. We find that the less communication between the corresponding undead governments, the less we concern ourselves with politics and the more we focus on our work.

There are 10 overall jurisdictions within the Summons Department; to which paired agents are assigned. At the time, I was in charge of Sector Two, _Shokocho,_ which included Kyushu but not Okinawa. Most of the Shinigami prefer to remain at the central office, the Ministry proper but some situate themselves within the region they are assigned; within the field office located there. Chidsuru, the supervisor of Okinawa, for example remained stationed at _Shinkocho_ – Area One. I, on the other hand and many other agents aside, preferred to stay central. It was more social, I found and meant I could take easy advantage of Ministry Housing, which was mostly covered in the _Taisencho_ region.

The government of the Waking World (in so saying, the world of the living) have yet to publicly announce the existence of the Intermediate Realm (Hades) and all manner of nasties that come along with it. So Ministry Members are authorized instead to pass themselves off as either members of the Japanese police special-forces unit or private detectives. It's easier to explain that way.

The Summons Section was _officially_ founded in 1910; two years before I was born. Total employees: 18. Our Chief of staff, Rokuro Konoe is the only member of the Summons department that has been here longer than myself, though I couldn't say for certainty just how old he is. In respect to his personality, Konoe is both a kind and supportive man, who keeps us well in our place but not so much that we would hate him for it. We, all of us, tended to look upon him as a fatherly figure and so most of the dirty administrative work fell to the Secretary, Seiichirou Tatsumi. He had been my third partner, many years ago and whilst I still look to him as a dear friend, Tatsumi is a stern disciplinarian who prefers for things to be done by the book. As such, he often clashed with Watari's more outgoing, play-it-by-ear, happy-go-lucky disposition. Watari, as well as being the Shinigami in charge of Area 6, was the division medic and one of the two member scientific analysis personnel and current firearms specialist.

The location of the Ministry is Tokyo. The Waking World and the Intermediate World are mirror images of each other. The buildings and the scenery are pretty much the same. The Ministry is, in fact, the mirror image of Parliament building. The Underdwelling and Celestial Realm are also mirror realms, existing in symbiosis with both Hades and the Waking World. If it's easier to think of them as being other dimensions then by all means do, because in essence, that is precisely what they are.

When lost souls or demonic entities (known officially as Underdwellers) are sighted, it's our job to go get 'em. When it comes to demons, it's like exterminating diseased rats, with a higher exterminator death rate. Shinigami turn over due to stress, injury and personal reasons is amongst the highest within the Ministry, due to the difficult nature of our jobs. The money also, as you imagine is not a terribly compelling reason to stay. For the most part, what we lack in remuneration we make up for with prestige. These are the founding principles of the Summons Section.

As well as the plaque, there were some photos on the left hand wall from a shooting competition we had some time back. Often there is a great deal of inter-department rivalry within the Ministry of Hades and so far the Summons Section has been undefeated. On the seventh day of each New Year the Ministry holds an Archery competition, in which each department enters a team of three to compete. In magic, spiritual strength is the most important factor. The greater ones' spiritual strength, the greater ones ability to use magic and spells, so these competitions were introduced to encourage the development of all spiritual abilities. As an afterthought, it was then proposed that if such emphasis was to be placed on martial art forms such as archery, why then couldn't this apply to the mechanical use of weapons such as firearms? The founding notion behind this was both to encourage and remind employees of the Ministry that they weren't to depend too greatly on their spiritual abilities, lest they find themselves devoid of them one day. In response to this, a number of months ago, the use of firearms and other handheld weapons was collaborated into a secondary competition to take place in the month of May and had been considered a great success. With my _mana_ abilities being so high, I'd never needed to learn how to use a gun (and when I had tried my aim was terrible) but quite a few Shinigami were more than skilled in that particular area, as demonstrated by the photographs before me.

**1st Place: Hajime Terazuma**. He's a Shinigami too, the partner of Kannuki Wakaba who was the Head of Area 4; _Chuugoku_. In life he had been a policeman, as well as an elite martial artist, so I suppose it was only expected that his skills in gunplay would be high as well. Usually he's pretty quiet, reserved. But put him and I together and he goes wild.

We don't get along. For some reason, we rub one another up the wrong way. We even managed to destroy the Ministry library during one of our fights, so we usually do our best to stay far away from one another; an arrangement that suits our fellow employees also.

**2nd Place: Hisoka Kurosaki**. No surprises there. Hisoka had been my division partner for the last three years, which places him overall first in the 'putting up with me' category. Having been born into a very traditional old family that placed great emphasis upon martial arts training, Hisoka was greatly skilled in a number of areas that required both exceptional mental fortitude and exemplary hand to eye coordination. He'd been an expected shoe in during the archery competition and if you had ever seen his skill with a gun, then you wouldn't have batted an eye upon observing his efforts during the 'May-day' tournament. Oh no. The _big _surprise was who had pulled bronze.

**3rd Place: Yutaka Watari**. I don't think anyone was more surprised then Watari himself. Don't get me wrong; Watari is a brilliant techie and a kind, compassionate friend but when push came to shove he was as clumsy as one-legged duck out of water. Being a mad inventor, he actually _designed_ a number of weapons for use by the Summons Department in the May-Day comp, mostly firearms. But none of us ever actually had a clue he knew how to use them! None of us even knew what Watari was doing and thought maybe he'd been going along with it for a laugh. Well, I can't say he ever took it seriously but he'd sure driven the ball to the deep end, hitting each target with each of the requisite firearms, showing excellent precision.

This wasn't to say his skills were _consistent_ when it came to the field. In that arena, Hisoka was certainly superior. With his history in martial arts training, he knew how to martial his nerves and stay calm, keeping his arm steady. Watari often became so flustered if something was coming at him, he'd be just as likely to blow a hole through his own foot, as he was to actually hit the enemy.

Glancing once more over the competition photos, I left the Summons Section, turning off the hall lights before ducking into the toilet. I offered my reflection a passing look as I washed my hands, having never been particularly fond of mirrors. I can't say for sure why, unless it has something to do with how uncomfortable it made me to see my unusual eyes staring back at me. I knew it wasn't quite healthy to have such habits in place, so I made a point of looking directly into the glass surface and taking myself in.

"Here's looking at you, kid." I said, mulling my reflection over. It was strange to think how old I actually was beneath that youthful flesh and not just regarding the stasis of my body. I appeared to be a young man in my early twenties, when I had in fact been twenty-six when I'd passed away. It was kind of nice, I supposed but there was a reason behind it. It was what the Underdweller cells desired. Having evidence that I was not entirely human meant at the least I could understand why I had not aged during the final years of my life. A young host was advantageous; to live longer meant there was a greater life expectancy for my onboard guests. A number of highbred, upper ranking demons were known to have lived for millennia at a time. This wasn't something I ever imagined for myself. One normal, happy life was all I'd ever desired and something I continue to long for, laughable as it might sound.

My appearance wasn't unusual, if you were to exclude my vividly purple eyes. I'm told that I'm attractive but I truly do not feel that I'm any more compelling than anyone else I had ever met. My hair, always unkempt was deep black and highlighted with streaks of dark brown that I'd thrown in myself to keep my face from seeming too washed out. It was a little longer at the back, with symmetrical strands framing my cheeks and forehead, which had been the fashion for men in the early 1900's and something I still preferred to more contemporary styles. I had the customary tanned skin of the Japanese, high cheekbones, delicate, wholly un-masculine features and a firm, yet definitively feminine jaw. And I was tall, a few inches short of six feet, with long legs and a strong line from my waist to my back.

I'd always been a fairly lighthearted person but my moods were prone to fluctuate. I found it hard to climb out of these funks once I'd gotten into them. I had a history of clinical depression and self-harming tendencies and these were things that were not taken lightly, especially within a governmental job.

Which brings me at last to the reason _why _I had been staying back that evening.

Having finally arrived in the North Wing of the building, I was ushered into the office and immediately seated. Once coffee and pleasantries were out of the way, it was straight down to business.

"What do you see?" I was presented with a picture frame, containing the image of an inkblot. As I later came to understand, these cards and my interpretation of them were known as the Holtzman Inkblot **(1)** test and were commonly used with clients suffering from depression, head trauma and schizophrenia. The idea behind it is that the mind sees what it so chooses to see. It says a lot about someone's mental, emotional and psychological well being if we ask them to examine obscure images that could quite frankly be anything. Depending on what you saw, well…

At the time I did not quite see the point to it all but now I can only laugh at the sick perverse irony of knowing how our internalizations can cause so much damage. That which we can perceive can destroy us.

I examined the inkblot, rather bored by it all. "It's two little boys hitting each other with sticks."

"All right…" The card was withdrawn, so that Dr. Squirrel could make a note of my comment. Of course his real name wasn't Dr. Squirrel. It was Sanetoki Kaoin and as you've probably guessed by now, he's the Ministry psychiatrist and perhaps the most busy and highly paid member of staff. I'd been referred to him for weekly sessions following my mental collapse in Kyoto, though this certainly had not been the start of our acquaintanceship. I'd been coming to see Dr. Squirrel on and off from the moment I'd first become a Guardian of Death, sometimes voluntarily (because he was always happy to listen) other times on order from my superiors. His disposition was really as kindly and sweet as you could imagine and he was so down to earth that you couldn't help but like him; even if you didn't like having to be there. He always tried to make sessions comfortable, by catering to whomever he was expecting. With me, he would always set out a variety of sweets so that I could nibble on them throughout the session. He always took the issues of the client seriously but never himself, which was what kept him grounded, level and wholly approachable. This made him easy to talk to, which I truly appreciated, having been committed to seeing him for the better half of a year.

He was a tall, somewhat untidy gentleman who had passed away in his early forties and almost always seemed to have a cigarette stub between his lips when I happened to catch him on one of his very few breaks. His hair was a dull gray-brown, what you would call a 'salt and pepper' shade I would suppose and his clothes always seemed to coordinate with this; being of earthy tone and understated. Often it was a very casual turtle neck sweater and plain pants with perhaps a coat thrown over top if it was cold but always left unbuttoned. He wore an expensive brand of glasses (no doubt the most pricey article of his entire ensemble) and sometimes when I looked at him I imagined he was something of a grizzly older version of Muraki and then immediately berated myself for having such thoughts. Dr. Kaoin's demeanor was so far removed from Muraki; why it was like comparing the Dalai Llama to Hitler!

You would think that being so well liked and respected by the Ministry staff, that more people would actually know Dr. Kaoin's real name. We all however, simply referred to him as 'Dr. Squirrel', a nickname that had so long been in place I can't imagine who had even come up with it. I do understand the meaning behind it; as the department shrink, Ministry employees were sent to see him whenever they 'got squirrelly'. And his initials being SK, if arranged so that his given name was placed first, it sort of slurred together to produce the first sound in the English word 'squirrel', which was how we referred to him.

Not that the doctor minded. In fact, I would hardly have been surprised if it had been _him _that had kicked off that nickname. I mean, we were even allowed to refer to him as such in _session_, which you imagine would have been an entirely professional setting.

And he wasn't even the least bit _like _a squirrel! His movements were always so slow and thoughtful. Usually, the only part of him that would move was his foot, which would bob up and down in the air as he listened intently, his large doe like eyes always making perfect, meaningful contact, as though nothing else mattered so much to him as to sit there and listen to you speak.

As fond as my feelings towards him were, on that particular day I was hardly in the best of moods and all I really wanted to do was go home and start getting things ready for my dinner with Hisoka.

"Forgive me, Doctor but I can hardly see why any of this is relevant." I confessed, watching as he rounded off whatever he had been writing before sliding the pencil behind his ear.

"I can understand why you might feel that way but believe it or not, this is helpful to me. Now," At this, Dr. Squirrel held up another card for my inspection. "Last one." He said, with a supportive smile. "What do you see?"

I took a moment to mull this one over. "… It's a flower. A rose."

Dr. Squirrel seemed pleased at this because the corner of his mouth twitched slightly as he jotted this down. "Okay."

I went back to examining the card and upon closer inspection, found that my feelings on what was presented to me had changed. "It's an unusually drippy rose… it looks like it's melting in a fire. Oh! No!" I exclaimed, pointing at it with urgency. "It's bleeding! It's a _bloody _rose!"

Whatever positive reinforcement Dr. Squirrel had salvaged from my previous answer, had all but been annihilated by my second hand account. His eyes drifted up to take me in, with an expression that seemed to suggest I was not doing myself any favors with such an interpretation of the subject matter and I had to smile as he very deliberately struck out what he had just written.

"Can I go now?"

Dr. Squirrel placed the inkblot cards away and folded his hands, placing them not at all gently down on his writing pad. "I still think we have some work to do, Tsuzuki-san."

I groaned like an impatient child, sinking my head back against the armchair upon which I was sitting. "I just don't see why I have to go through this again!"

"Standard procedure for a Shinigami agent following severe trauma." Dr. Squirrel explained, offering me a smile that said he was sorry for the inconvenience on my part. "A regular evaluation of your current mental and emotional state is compulsory to ensure that you're still fit to undertake fieldwork duties."

I knew all of this already and being reminded of it didn't change my feelings one iota. "Trust me, I am the best judge of my emotional and mental state. I'm _fine. _Have been for the last six months. I seem well to you now, don't I?" This came as more of an urgent plea for approval, for there was tenor of diffidence discernible in my voice.

Dr. Squirrel inclined his head thoughtfully. "Well, there's no doubt that you have shown improvement. But that's not only what the Ministry is looking for I'm afraid." He gave me a kindly look. "I know these sessions can't be any fun, Tsuzuki-san but let's both do our best to get through them. Consider it a favor to me. Once we're done, I can grant you a clean bill of health and then you'll hopefully never have to set eyes on me again."

He could be manipulative when he wanted. Having played on my kindness, he understood I would stick this out just as a means to help him. "We've gone down that particular road a few times, doc. Never seems to make no matter mind. Sides..." I smiled at him. "… you ain't all that bad."

He chuckled in that soft, unobtrusive manner of his but I could see that he had sincerely appreciated my comment. Sometimes it's a little hard to know when someone in his position genuinely enjoys something you have said, or if they're just humoring you. "Glad to hear it, my boy. Tell me, how are things going with your partner?" And thus commenced the 'catch-up' portion of our meeting. "Are you getting along better now? That was of some concern to you in your previous sessions, if I correctly recall."

I had briefly met with Dr. Squirrel during the outset of my partnership with Hisoka. I hadn't been attending to talk specifically about Hisoka but it had been something of a stressor at the time; in that I wasn't sure if we were compatible with one another and whether our work might suffer as a result. "Everything's fine now." I assured, waving my hand about leisurely. "Hisoka and I… well, we're two different people, so our personalities clash sometimes but… I know he cares about me. He's just not very particular about showing it most of the time."

It seemed to please Dr. Squirrel to hear this and he made a brief notation on his writing pad.

"Wonderful. Most wonderful. I'm glad to hear things are improving in that department. It certainly makes your life at work a lot less stressful I imagine."

I nodded. "Yeah… Hisoka's been great. He's kept me on the tracks when I've felt as though I might have derailed more than once. I owe him a lot."

"Yes, he certainly is a kindly and resilient young man." Dr. Squirrel mused and I could only suppose he had met with Hisoka casually, because he would not have spoken of him if it had been in a clientele situation. "And besides Hisoka, who would you say are the people in your life that play an important role at the moment?"

I creased my brows, feeling some sense of irritation seep in. "Come on, doc. I've told you about my friends before."

"As I said before, _humor me. _Remember I'm an old man, Tsuzuki-san." He tapped the side of his head with the notepad, smiling all the while. "My memory is not as good as it perhaps once was."

"Well if you say so…" I understand now that what Dr. Squirrel was actually looking for, was an insight into whom I structured my life around and how they might have supported me. He wanted to see what was working for me and build on this if possible. Though I hadn't at first seen it, it really was a very clever question. "Well… the people I work with here in the Ministry are all important to me. There's Hisoka of course… um, Tatsumi… Chief Konoe, Wakaba, Saya, Yuma… oh and Watari."

Dr. Squirrel paused for a moment and his mouth formed a straightened line, which he usually did when something important came to mind. He shifted a little, before gesturing towards me with his extremely chewed upon pencil. "Now, this is very interesting to me, Tsuzuki-san. Because the last time I saw you in here some years ago, _'Oh-and-Watari'_ was the first person you named. Why do you suppose you thought of him last in this instance?"

This was also very interesting to me because I hadn't even considered as to why I had thought of Watari last. We had always gotten along well, better in fact than I did with any other member of staff. It might have been that I simply took it for granted and so it required greater effort to think of everyone else. "I… I don't know, really." I confessed, still confused as Hell by my own thoughts. "I guess probably because we haven't been seeing much of each other lately." This seemed logical enough to me. "Hisoka I see everyday 'cause he's my partner and all and Tatsumi's always with the Chief to issue directives, so I guess I see him around a bit too…"

Dr. Squirrel nodded, now scratching the back of his head with the pencil. Sometimes he was so categorically informal it was comical. "And Wakaba, Saya and Yuma? You see them quite frequently also?"

This caused me to shift uncomfortably, as it was not the case at all. "Not really… Wakaba is a different division and Saya and Yuma often get snowed in up at the Hokkaido office."

"Hmm… I see." The doc pondered this for a moment, his thoughts so distracted he actually twiddled the pencil eraser about in his ear before realizing that this was neither the time nor place to be excavating for wax and popped it out in such a way that it actually produced a sound. "How are things between yourself and Watari-san?"

I was still attempting to stifle my laughter from what had just occurred and almost missed his question. "Oh, how have things been? … Good." I said, nodding reassuringly. "Good, good. We're always good." I felt uncomfortable again and shuffled about, re-crossing my legs as a means to alleviate my sudden agitation. "But…"

"Yes?" Dr. Squirrel prompted

I tried to best summarize my feelings, though I wasn't as of yet entirely sure of them myself. "I kinda feel like there's something that's been left unsaid, you know?" I nodded, more to myself. This did seem to be the most accurate way to describe it. "Like there's something on his mind that he wants to voice out loud but doesn't."

"Why don't you ask him?" Dr. Squirrel asked, looking at me sidelong in his ever gentle, non-provocative manner. He could ask you to take off your trousers and put them on the teakettle in that exact same tone of voice and before you knew it the kettle would be sporting a nice new pair of togs!

"Watari doesn't talk about himself much. And he gets sort of embarrassed if anyone worries about him… but… I think I will have a chat with him." I glanced up, hoping to meet with the doc's approval and felt a swelling in my chest when I caught the hint of a favorable smile grace his smooth features. "I'd hate to think we were drifting apart."

"No. Because the two of you are very good friends, aren't you?"

"The best of friends. Watari has always been kind to me." I said, nodding thoughtfully as I took another sip from my coffee. "Maybe it's time I returned the favor; that what you're getting at, doc?"

Dr. Squirrel pretended to be serious with me. "You know I'm not here to tell you what to do, Tsuzuki-san. I'm just here to make you feel guilty about the things you feel you _ought_ to be doing." He smiled somewhat playfully as he jotted down another note, cheek resting on the fist of his free hand. "Now, coming back to our association task. … I'm going to be straight with you. I'm a little confused."

"You sure as Hell ain't the only one." I confessed, with a small, not at all veiled roll of my eyes.

"In the task you identified in this order," Here Dr. Squirrel referred to his notes. "… a wine glass, a, quote-unquote, 'freaky china doll face', the moon, a syringe – possibly a knife, a building with a steeple, kids thrashing each other with sticks and a –" He squinted, having apparent difficulty with reading even his own writing. "-melting bloody rose." He folded his hands, one over the other. "I'm going to take a step back for a moment and put this to you; what do you imagine these assimilations mean?"

Now this, I'll admit was of some irritation to me. I was attending these sessions in the hopes that it wouldn't come down to _me_ to explain to my _therapist_ just what was going on in my head. Especially not on that particular afternoon, when I felt decidedly lazy and impatient, which was not a terribly positive combination when thrown into a stuffy room.

"Well, let's see…" I said, leaning over with my fingertips pressed together and poised in mid-air, just to make clear that I was not about to take any of this seriously. "The syringe is _clearly _representative of my sexual repression. Notice the predominant phallic theme? The kids hitting each other with sticks pertain to my _rampant _S and M fetish; the rose of course is my sex drive. It's wilting away because it's not getting any sun, water or attention. The doll is how I view myself, hardened to an impenetrable façade after so many years of romantic isolation, the building with the steeple is undoubtedly a church, which represents the fact that I will never get married, the moon shows I like long walks on the beach at night and picnics by the bay. Oh, and the wine glass is a _blatant _indication of my _prevailing _alcoholism. How's my aim?"

Dr. Squirrel took a moment to absorb this and almost succeeded in remaining serious. But sure enough, the sides of his mouth quirked up and the both of us were soon laughing as the tension in the room evaporated such as steam.

"Well, I can say this much," He said, pressing his writing pad to his forehead as a means to hide his laughter. "There's certainly nothing at all wrong with your sense of humor."

"Wish I could have that down in writing," I mused, thinking of how many people would have openly disputed that. Terazuma, in particular.

Dr. Squirrel smiled, seeming to have regained his composure. "I'll make a note of it." He sighed cheerfully as he crossed one leg over the other and settled himself back into working order. "Oh dear… in all seriousness though, I find it interesting that in deconstructing your associations, even if in jest, your interpretations of each 'object' had some manner of romantic or sexual connotation."

"Well what did you expect? I _am _a man." I said, which caused Dr. Squirrel to laugh again. "Hey doc, we're not going to go into detail about my love life, are we? Because let me tell you straight up, it would be the shortest autobiography in the history of mankind." I waved a hand, indicating that we should move on if possible. "I only said that stuff because everything's somehow sexually related when it comes to you guys."

The doctor chuckled as he pushed his glasses back up his nose with a reflexive pinky finger. "Well, that may be partially true with a Freudian psychiatrist, Tsuzuki-san. I, however, am a Jungian. So, there'll be no blaming mother or your penis today, I'm afraid."

I scoffed, unable to contain myself. "It's hard to blame someone who has never there and something I never use."

"It would seem to me as though you must have some very uncomfortable bladder problems, Tsuzuki-san. How's that workin' for ya?"

This time it was my turn to laugh, for it really had been a quite clever response to a not so well thought out statement, on my behalf. "No, you know what I mean!"

Dr. Squirrel smiled. "Yes I know. I just wasn't able to resist that one. I do apologize." He tapped his pencil rubber against his notepad, again assuming that thoughtful expression. "I confess; this is most intriguing, Tsuzuki-san. You never have mentioned your mother in session before. And you say she was never around?"

I swirled my coffee about distractedly before partaking of the cooling beverage. "I told ya before; Ruka raised me." I set the coffee down and instead picked up an apple from a bowl on the side table and bit into it, feeling the juices run down my chin. "I don't remember much about our parents. They left when I was real small."

"It sounds as though it must have been difficult for both you and your sister." Dr. Squirrel said sympathetically, not taking notes but instead focusing the entirety of his attention on me. Feeling self conscious, I wiped my chin off by unrolling my shirtsleeve and applying it to my face.

"You could say that," I said, taking another bite of the apple when I was sure my face was tidy. "Ruka had to work and run a household… all I ever did was bring trouble home."

"You have mentioned before that there was a great deal of violence towards you from the other children in your district. Is that what you mean when you say 'trouble?'"

"Yeah," I said, shrugging a little as I chewed on my fresh bite of apple. I tried to laugh the age-old feelings off, as I always did but they still made my chest ache when I thought back on just how sad and lonely my childhood had been. "Still, doesn't matter now, right doc?"

Dr. Squirrel gave me an unusually compelling look. "You tell me."

"What's to tell?" I complained; feeling slightly exasperated. "They're not the best memories but I think they've made me more empathetic towards others. I hate to think of anyone being treated the same way that I was."

"Yes," the doc mused, seeming to find my answer satisfying. "I can see that. You're a very kind and thoughtful person. Perhaps this explains the association picture of the children hitting one another."

"… That I hit back?" I said, uncertainly. This didn't seem to describe my personality at all. "I never actually did that. Not until…" I slammed the shutters together to hold back that particular memory and shook my head, to indicate it would not be conveyed aloud. "Never mind…"

"What is it?" Dr. Squirrel prompted, having not taken the hint that I simply did not wish to discuss it. As far as this shrink was concerned, it was all cards on the table, 'let's see what you got and then we'll work from there'. My approach to such things was to hold back a little because you didn't always have to play the hand you're dealt.

"Nothing I want to talk about today. Violence begets violence, right doc?" I flashed him a very cheesy smile and I suppose he was disappointed by my refusal to confide in him but he hid it well.

"The real world is not so ideal, unfortunately." He said, resting back in his armchair. I hadn't even realized that he'd been leaning forwards in the first place. "I never encourage it of course but sadly… there are a number of conflicts I can see would never have been resolved by talk alone. However, your interpretation of the inkblot is not saying that. I believe it represents perseverance. I think, Tsuzuki-san, that you have seen something of that will to fight on within yourself." He seemed very pleased and his face adopted that genuinely warm and approving expression I, and so many other clients, sought so much. "This is a big step, a big development, Tsuzuki-san! It shows perhaps that you are ready now, more than ever, to move on from those memories. Just by showing how you wish to take those sad, hurtful times and transform them alternatively into a means through which to live your life, well! It says so much about who you are and how you adopt means to make good from bad. I'm so very proud to see that."

I could have blushed; so obvious his pleasure was at my apparent development. "Heh… I sure as Hell hope so, doc. But… what the Hell do the rest of these interpretations mean?"

Dr. Squirrel continued to smile as he adjusted his position on the chair to swing his legs ever so casually over the arm, so that they both dangled in midair. "Well, even though you upended a veritable drudgery of sarcasm upon me, Tsuzuki-san, I could see a little something beneath it all."

I groaned, adopting a similar pose to him. It was that time of afternoon when you just couldn't be stuffed with formality. "Not the sexual repression thing again, doc! It's so old hat!"

"I like old hat's. They have character and they always provide the perfect accessory to a well thought out ensemble." He said, displaying one of his trademark habits of saying something incredibly silly and unexpected in an otherwise serious conversation. "If we are to don that particular old hat though, would you be so kind as to tell me whether it fits your head?"

It was rather obscure but he had asked me variations of this question before, though it was usually a boot reference. If it fits… then it has bearing and is worth discussing, in other words. Dr. Squirrel was asking me if there was in fact any truth behind my sexual repression associations.

"Of course it fits, otherwise I wouldn't be so uncomfortable about it, right?" I almost snapped and felt bad at once for being grumpy with him. I wasn't the only one stuck here after hours. He was too and yet, though I'm sure he would much rather have preferred to be home with his girlfriend, he was being incredibly kind and patient with me, approaching what was clearly a sensitive topic with consistently applied compassion. I sighed and conveyed to him how truly sorry I was for having spoken to him in such a manner.

"To be honest, I didn't even notice." Dr. Squirrel confessed, looking towards the ceiling in a confused gesture. "But I'll accept your apology, whatever it was for. Moving right along, if we're to take that angle, then I can only surmise that those other images you identified represent some sort of sexual association. Or romantic, if you prefer."

I pulled a face. "With all due respect, doc. I have never had romantic inclinations towards a syringe."

He gazed at his notes thoughtfully. "No… they don't exactly bring that out in me either. Any thoughts on it?"

I knew exactly what it meant, though I didn't even like thinking about it more than I had to. "… needle phobia." I finally admitted, shifting about on the chair a little as my entire skin twitched from the mere _thought_ of receiving an injection. "From my time spent hospitalized, I suppose."

Dr. Squirrel made a note. "Yes… we have discussed your years within the institution during a previous session."

I sighed, taking another bite of the apple as I looked distractedly out the window, feeling more than a little uncomfortable about the turn our conversation had taken. Dr. Squirrel noticed my discomfort right away, which was the mark of a good psychiatrist I suppose.

"Are you quite all right, Tsuzuki-san?"

"… Yeah…" I drawled, glancing down towards the floor now, lacking the energy required to even make eye contact. I knew that this was rude but I was banking on Dr. Squirrel to understand this. "I guess we've… sort of struck upon a nerve with this talk."

The doctor inclined his head. "I apologize. There's absolutely no need for us to speak of your time in the hospital during this session."

I finally looked up at him. "Oh no, I'm fine with talking about that. I don't remember much of it anyway. It's the um…" I shifted again, to the effect I suppose that it must have looked as though I were attempting to make myself comfortable on a porcupine. "…the sexual stuff I get uncomfortable with."

"Why do you suppose that is?" The doctor asked, sitting up a little just to indicate that I had his full-undivided attention.

I groaned, something I seemed to be doing a lot of in this session and almost considered lobbing what was left of my apple at him. "Doc, _please_! Can't you just give it to me straight? _You're _the shrink here. You're supposed to be able to see what's wrong in this dumb brain of mine. I'm too confused about myself to know my left side from my right side at the moment."

He smiled patiently at me until I was through and then said in his ever-unfailingly gentle voice, "I can see why this is frustrating for you, Tsuzuki-san but you must remember that this is the first time you have spoken with me about this particular aspect of your life. I can't even pretend to make an educated guess at this early juncture, let alone render my opinion on what might be done for you." He pointed his pencil at me in what I took to be a rather stern manner. "And I've said this before and I'll say it again; there is _nothing _wrong with you that a little self-confidence wouldn't cure."

I smiled, feeling awfully touched by such words and the sensitive way he had handled my outburst. "Gotta hand you that one." I took another bite of the apple, almost down to the core of it now I noticed and chewed thoughtfully. "Okay… I guess I can talk about this with you. All confidential, right?"

"Hardly any point to closing that door if it wasn't, Tsuzuki-san."

I laughed. "Just being sure." I took another bite of the apple, stalling for time. "Doc…" I paused to give that hunk of fruit a decidedly voracious chew and Dr. Squirrel continued to wait patiently, smiling pleasantly all the while. The man was surely a Buddha. "I'm not sure what I can tell you about my sex life that would be of any use to us. I don't exactly have one to speak of."

Dr. Squirrel nodded, taking this in. "Right. Well, that's not so unusual, Tsuzuki-san. 'Shinigami' and 'sex-life' you understand are something of an oxymoron."

"Oxy-what?" I asked, having not quite understood him. I'm not the smartest guy around, as I'm sure you already know and I'd never had a formal education. As such, words that were of common usage to most people were sometimes lost on me.

"Opposite meaning." Dr. Squirrel explained and he didn't seem to find my ignorance amusing in the least, for which I was grateful. "It's kind of difficult to have a normal sex life when you're dead."

"Be that as it may, I'm not even talking about my time spent as a Shinigami." I paused at this juncture to glance about the room, checking to see if anyone was listening, though they would have had to have been the most determined eavesdropper on the planet to hide behind a willowy pot plant and a hyper filter. "I'm talking zero. Nada. Zip. _Nil_."

Dr. Squirrel had been tapping his writing pad with his pencil and now I saw this movement gradually slow as he took in my admission, becoming progressively more shocked by it I suppose. He blinked at me incredulously, as though awaiting a correction that was not coming. "In so saying… you…" He swung his legs off of the arm of the chair and back onto the floor, facing me entirely. "Are you trying to tell me that you have never had sexual intercourse? … At all?"

"Hit the nail on the head, doc." I said, taking the last remnant of soft fruit from the apples surface and then spinning the core about in the air by its stem. For some reason, I felt vaguely satisfied that I'd been able to shock the doctor a little. He was always so calm and collected; it was good to see that some of my problems had obvious merit.

"Oh my…" He said, leaning back from me, seeming quite disbelieving. "… Well… I must admit… I'm a little surprised." _No shit_, I thought. "Not even pro-mortem?"

In case you're wondering, he was referring to the time when I was alive. "How could I possibly? No one was brave enough to go out with me for fear of what anyone else would say or do. And during my most sexually active years I was institutionalized and in a mostly catatonic state, to cap it off. Where could a sex life possibly be squeezed in?"

It seemed as though Dr. Squirrel thought that I was somehow mistaken and that I had actually had sex but had somehow forgotten. "And in the seventy years since?"

"… I've never felt comfortable with it." I confessed, still spinning that core resolutely in circles above my head. "I spent years trying to figure myself out. Sexually, I mean. By the time I thought that I had, I just couldn't imagine how a normal sex-life for me would have been possible. I got old… habitualized with what was familiar, what worked for me. It's something I've never had, so it's not something I miss, if you get what I mean."

"Well, I just sort of assumed… I mean, considering how popular you are…" Dr. Squirrel halted this chain of thought, as something obviously came to mind. "Concerning your sexuality, Tsuzuki-san. Am I to take this to mean that you are-?"

I sighed, peeling off a smidgen of apple skin between my teeth and chewing on it, as a means of occupying myself. "That's the million dollar question, doc. I've had feelings towards girls before but they've never been anything stronger than a fondness… entirely non-physical, for the most part. I look to women the same sort of way I looked to my sister. As someone who is to be respected, adored, loved… at a distance."

Dr. Squirrel was now scribbling so furiously I was concerned he might have set the notepad alight. He looked just like an excited journalist, claiming the scoop for the mornings' paper. "So, it is men that you are predominately interested in?"

I admit, I had to think about this seriously because it seemed quite a big thing for me to finally admit out loud. "Well… I guess so. It pisses me off something shocking, doc. I don't care if I'm straight or gay, so long as it's one or the other. I don't wanna be bisexual. It's so… sleazy." I scratched the crown of my head with my spare hand, feeling the bare beginnings of a headache. "It has such a slutty connotation."

"If I'm to understand that you have no sexually based feelings towards women," Dr. Squirrel considered, holding his pencil poised between his teeth and bobbing it up and down. "It would seem to me that you are perhaps homosexual. Correct me if I'm wrong. You are the one who is the better judge of your own feelings."

I swallowed back a thick lump that had formed in the nadir of my throat. Though I understood that it was foolish to think of my words as being set in stone, there seemed to be something final in actually admitting such personal feelings out loud. It had always been introspective musings; the consideration of my sexuality and what it meant for me. But that's all they ever had been: musings. With no concrete basis for reality. I'd never felt the need to take any decisive standing on it but now… I couldn't quite fathom why exactly but I felt that to speak of it to Dr. Squirrel was to give it flesh and bone, whereas until now it had been nothing more substantial than a wisp of smoke. Of course it is senseless but when you are considering such matters that determine a large part of your own identity… well, it's frightening, to say the least. As I'm sure you're all well aware of yourselves!

"No…" I finally stated, though I wasn't outwardly disagreeing with him. "I think I just… you know, love the person, whether they be male or female. I don't sleep around, _obviously_, so I don't think that sort of view is particularly slutty."

"I believe that is a very mature way of looking at it."

I smiled grimly at the doctor as I tossed the apple core back and forth between my hands. It felt hard to smile all of a sudden and I wondered how I looked from his eyes now that he was privy to this shameful side of me. "Told you there was something wrong with me, doc."

He gave me what I took to be a very scolding look. "Oh goodness, Tsuzuki-san. There's nothing wrong with being a virgin."

"Not even for a hundred years?" I asked, skeptically. Dr. Squirrel smiled.

"I'll admit that it's a little unusual but that shouldn't at all suggest it is a bad thing. There's no reason to force yourself into doing something that doesn't feel natural to you."

"That's what Watari said." I murmured, looking down towards my now sticky hands thoughtfully.

Dr. Squirrel nodded. "Well, you should listen to Watari-san. It's good that you have spoken with someone else about these things." He twiddled the pencil about in mid air, much like a martial artist demonstrating staff choreography on a not so grand a scale. "Does Watari-san make you feel uncomfortable regarding this aspect of your life?"

I shook my head persuasively. "Oh no. Not really. Sometimes he teases me about it but if he sees I'm really upset by it, he knows when to take a step back. He's actually been really supportive." I sighed deeply, feeling the weight of guilt bearing down upon my chest. "I feel bad now I haven't seen him in so long."

"Be that as it may," Dr. Squirrel said, pointing at me with his pencil, now sporting a number of additional teeth marks. "I can now better understand some of your concerns. It seems as though this sort of thing could be additionally frustrating."

I lifted my brow in something of a curt manner. "_Frustrating?_' Doc, I _long _for the days of 'frustrating'. 'Frustrating' was a holiday in Bermuda. … I keep a picture of 'Frustrating' in a heart shaped frame next to my bed. … Frustrating is-"

Dr. Squirrel held up a hand to indicate I needn't go any further. "I follow you. And it seems as though there's something behind these association tasks after all. A rose, the moon, a wine glass – these things make you think of…?"

"Well, romance I suppose." I said, shrugging nonchalantly. It didn't take a PhD to figure that out. "But I don't get that feeling looking at them."

"Really?" He seemed intrigued now. "Well, that's interesting. What feeling do you get?"

"Hard to say," I mumbled, thinking back to the impression I'd had upon observing each of the cards when presented to me. Once more I registered that unfamiliar surge of anticipation that had been persistently besetting me throughout the day. "Like I'm waiting for something to happen. I look at these images, I feel the same way." I considered, finger poised against the curve of my chin. "The moon… I watch it most nights. To see if it's going to turn red before my eyes. It will mean the games on again. The roses, well… we had a rose garden at our home here in Tokyo all those years ago but I don't think of that when I see this picture. I see… something pure that's been stained. Like… there's an image in my memory I can't quite break into." I tapped the side of my head, frustrated. "The wine glass… I admit I do drink a lot but again, I don't see that when I look at the picture."

Dr. Squirrel picked up the inkblot card under discussion, examining it for himself before showing it to me once again. "It is interesting because most people see a woman when they look at this picture."

I cocked my head to the side, trying to adopt this perception but not entirely seeing it. "I can understand how they might make that association… but no, I still see the wine glass. The doll face…" Dr. Squirrel now held this particular card up for me. "I see a cold mask that looks beautiful and poised… but that's all it is. A mask. There's something behind it that's so much fouler and uglier and truer then what the rest of the world sees."

Dr. Squirrel looked pleasantly surprised. "Tsuzuki-san… that's an insightful interpretation."

"Cheers doc."

"Can you bring it all together somehow?"

I took a minute to chew on all of this, trying to decide exactly what all of it meant. "I think… you're right about the picture of the kids with sticks. I _do _feel like I'm ready to persevere and fight on. The syringe is just a remnant of my old fears but I think… I think it also represents a current fear."

"And what might that be?" The doctor asked, looking at me curiously.

My eyes darted about the room of their own volition and I felt anxiety start to swell in my chest, to the degree where I actually had no choice but to forcefully repress it. I didn't want to think of him unless I had to… it made everything that much more difficult. "I'm afraid… that I'll… become well. And feel safe and happy again. And as soon as I do… that moon will change again."

"You keep saying the moon…" The doctor leant back in his chair, scratching his hairline with the pencil eraser before sliding the rubber back between his teeth and giving it a good chew. "From the reports I've received, I understand that this is in fact a quite literal thing you are mentioning and not a visual hallucination." He whisked the pencil out from between his teeth and pointed it at me so quickly I saw spittle come hurtling off of the end. "When you refer to your 'present fear', am I to take it that you are in fact speaking of… him."

I bit my lip, hearing my voice issue so softly from my lungs that it seemed to come in fact from a great distance. "… yeah…"

Dr. Squirrel's eyes sloped downwards sympathetically. "He seems to have caused you quite a bit of trouble, hasn't he?"

I scoffed. "Like you couldn't imagine, doc."

"Kazutaka Muraki…" Dr. Squirrel climbed to his feet and crossed the room to distribute some water into the corner pot plant, granting me a moment to repose myself. Having reminded myself of just what that… man had done to so many was enough to bring tears to my eyes. "They've come to refer to him as the Red Moon's Calamity. I suppose that's because we have no real way of knowing just _what _he truly is."

I dabbed at my eyes with a tissue from the box always kept in ready supply on the side table. I'd been determined not to cry, regardless of what we discussed within the session; but it soon occurred to me that crying was perhaps exactly what I needed in order to soothe my anxiety. And where better to indulge upon it than this setting? And suddenly it felt so easy, like letting sand slide through my fingers

"He's on my mind so much. In my dreams, my nightmares…" I could feel myself becoming increasingly distressed, just thinking about him. "I try but I just can't seem to shake him! He's in my thoughts in the waking hour, when I sleep, when I work… _I can't escape from him_!" I gesticulated to thin air, not yet composed enough to want to face Dr. Squirrel and have him witness the torture present on my face. "When I was in the Hall of Candles for the party celebrating the completion of the renovations, I saw a vision of him with both arms torn completely off! That image came _directly from my mind_. What does that say about me? He's a _monster_ – a calamity, just like you said and I…" I pressed a hand over my mouth, stifling a sob that threatened to spill over into reality. When I was sure I had a grip on myself I continued speaking, though my voice still wavered tellingly. "I feel guilty… for injuring him. And I live in terror that I might have even hurt him worse than I initially thought!" I sank my face down into my hands, trying to cover the tears as they streamed out uninhibited. Every tear that slid down my cheeks I cried for a different reason for there seemed so much to be mourned! I cried for Hisoka, for the life he would never be able to live. I cried for myself and for the other Shinigami and what would become of us all. I even cried for Muraki; so ruined and dark and unfathomable and cried for what evil could have possibly created him. Cried, it seemed, because there would be no ending it, not ever and to realize it, the futility of it all, was heartbreaking beyond all possible endurance. I heard Dr. Squirrel cross the room and sit down in front of me again, reaching over to gently clasp my wrists, just administering his touch. "I'm the worst… I _should _have killed him. And I shouldn't have to hate myself for having hurt him."

I don't think Dr. Squirrel quite knew what to say to any of what I had revealed, for he was reposed in silence for quite some time. "I'm so sorry," He said at last, releasing my wrists as I pulled my fingers away from my face. He passed me the tissue box, encouraging me to take another and dry my eyes. "I know you find it hard to understand now but… you did do the right thing. You preserved a human life and you feel sad that someone was hurt on account of your actions. You said yourself that you never wanted to treat anyone the way you yourself had been treated. Hmm?" He smiled kindly at me and I felt reassured a little, hearing the reason in what he was saying. I returned his smile as I wiped my eyes.

"Yeah…" I said, blowing my nose for extra measure before lobbing the scrunched up tissue into the wastepaper basket. "… yeah… I guess so…"

Dr. Squirrel kept eye contact with me as he spoke, so I knew that what he was saying was of extreme importance. "It's quite all right for you to feel sad but don't make the mistake of feeling guilty about these emotions." He shook his finger at me in a gentle chiding manner. "Doesn't it show what a profoundly kind and generous man you are, Tsuzuki-san? To care about someone's life and well being, _regardless _of what manner of person they are?"

"But Muraki… he's hurt so many people." I said, almost pleading for this to be recognized. "Even just to hurt me. I don't…" My eyes fell to the floor, sliding shut for lack of any other response to such anger and confusion. "I don't… understand people like him."

"From what you've told me, it sounds as though this Muraki fellow has a number of psychopathic tendencies," Dr. Squirrel understated, leaning back in his chair, continuing to suck on his pencil in place of a cigarette I supposed. "He possesses a high ego, his methods are cutthroat, ruthless, dispassionate, he expresses a profound lack of empathy… psychopaths will go to any length to achieve their goals. It is a…" He paused for a moment, apparently thinking of the word most befitting of concluding his thoughts. "… terrible affliction."

I glanced up at him, eyes red raw and sore from too much rubbing. "So then… Muraki has a mental disorder, the same as me."

Dr. Squirrel shook his head. "You're a little different, Tsuzuki-san. I couldn't say for sure just what Muraki's affliction is but I can say with confidence that _you _have a mood disorder, coupled with severe clinical depression – hence the prescribed antidepressant Lexapro** (2)**." He flashed me a heartening smile. "I believe however, having reviewed your progress, that you would benefit from a reduced dosage."

I perked up at hearing this. "Hey, some good news!"

The doctor made a note on his pad. "I'd like you to continue taking the pill with your evening meal and let me know how that goes." He waved the pencil at me. "I strongly recommend renewing your prescription until a final evaluation of your emotional and mental state. Is that all right with you?"

I dabbed my hand congenially at him. "You're the doc, doc."

He winked at me. "You know it. Now, as for everything else, the best possible recommendation I can make at this stage is just to keep your friends' close and work through each day one at a time. If you keep your eyes on that moon, your anxiety is only likely to increase. Take comfort in the things you enjoy doing, though I strongly suggest that you cut down on the drinking." Again, he shook the pencil at me. "For your own sake."

I stuck my tongue out, perhaps a little cheekily. "Don't believe in alternative medicine, doc?"

"Not if you're taking it along with what I've prescribed you!" He exclaimed, closing up his notepad and setting it down on his desktop. "And I do realize that a Shinigami sustains no lasting damage from drinking or smoking, etc but that's not what I'm worried about. My concern is that you'll become dependent on the drinking in order to make yourself feel a sense of calmness and normality. Eventually the amount will have to steadily increase to correspond with your tolerance level. You'll need to drink more just to feel calm and the more you drink… you see where I'm going with this?"

"I can see myself going bankrupt." I said, amused by Dr. Squirrel's concern.

He laughed. "That could be one of the problem's, yes. Just do us all a favor and think of alternative means of relaxing. I'm not saying you can't drink, just try not to depend on it too much. I was young once too, you know."

I wrinkled my nose at him. "Unfortunately doc, that's not an excuse I can use anymore." He gave me a particularly stern look. "I got you. I'll try and behave myself. Is that it?"

He checked his watch. "We've wrapped up earlier than I expected… I suppose I can let you have an early minute. Just don't tell your boss I did."

"He's already gone home for the night." I said, climbing to my feet and dusting the seat of my pants off. "Hey… thanks, doc." I reached out to shake his hand and realized after he'd taken it that my fingers were still sticky from my early fiddling with the apple. But if Dr. Squirrel noticed, he chose not to mention it. "I'm sorry I whine so much… you _really _are a help."

The doctor continued to smile as he released my hand and moved to perch himself on his desk chair, which he mounted backwards, much like a rebellious schoolboy. "I know it can't be any fun talking to a daft old coot like me. But don't forget it keeps me employed, so I guess in a way it's _me _that owes you the thanks." He held his hand up to the side of his face, pinky finger and thumb extended. "I'll give you a call to schedule your next appointment, okay?"

"Sounds good." I finally rid myself of the apple core, tossing it into the bin. "Owe you an apple."

Dr. Squirrel, already busying himself with paperwork, waved a hand carelessly over his shoulder. "Keep it. I dare say I have enough fruit cluttering up the office as it is."

I made a mock angry face. "Hey, I'll leave if you give me half a chance!"

He laughed, realizing the faux pas and appreciating how I'd chosen to respond to it. "Go on, get outta here. Go do something nice for yourself."

I chuckled appreciatively. "Think I'll do just that." I waved my hand, even though his back was turned. "See ya, doc."

Dr. Squirrel smiled over his shoulder. "Take care, Tsuzuki-san."

_**- EC -**_

**(1)****The Holtzman Inkblot Test**, conceived by Wayne Holtzman, is a projective personality test similar to the Rorschach Inkblot test. The Holtzman Inkblot Test was invented to correct many — if not all — of the controversial issues aroused by the Rorschach Inkblot Test.

The test consists of two alternate forms of forty-five inkblots, originally drawn from a pool of several thousand. Scoring is based on twenty-two items: reaction time, rejection, location, space, form definiteness, form appropriateness, color, shading, movement, pathognomonic verbalization, integration, content (human, animal, anatomy, sexual, or abstract), anxiety, hostility, barrier, penetration, balance, and popularity.

Scoring takes a very long time if the test is not administered by computer. The Holtzman Inkblot Test is used primarily with students, children, and with patients suffering from schizophrenia, head trauma or depression. A professional tester is required to obtain accurate results and interpretation. The Holtzman Inkblot Test has been used in both experimental and clinical applications.

**(2) ****Escitalopram** (**Lexapro** by Forest Laboratories) is an antidepressant of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor class. It has been approved for use in the treatment of major depressive disorders and generalized anxiety disorder; other indications include social anxiety disorder, panic disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Tsuzuki has been prescribed Lexapro to help control his depression, as well as to assist him in dealing with a possible panic disorder. (Note the amount of panic attacks he has throughout Dark Adaptation in particular, owing to the episode he had in Kyoto. It is related directly to his severe clinical depression).

**A/N: Well guys, I know that was quite boring but believe it or not, it's actually necessary for stuff I have coming up at a later date! It would be swell to have some reviews of the nice persuasion and then I'll feel extra encouraged to get part two out as quickly as possible! By the by, thankyou for Jollyolly and ViolentRoses for pre-reading and betta-ring for me. You guys are the best! More exciting stuff coming up I promise! Thanks again for your support, dear readers! Please show your support with a review but don't bother to flame me if you didn't like it. I don't come to your house and say mean things about your taste in interior decorating, so don't come into my stories and say you don't like the content. ... It's not really the same thing but oh well! XD**

**This won't take long to update! All this stuff is already written, I'm just waiting for Jollyolly to finish betta-ring for me, so I'll see ya's all soon! **

**Love ya guys! ~ Hickok ~**


	2. Never Turning, Ever Unerring

_**Dark Adaptation – Dead Men Working.**_

**Never Turning, Ever Unerring**

**DISCLAIMER****: **Yami no Matseui and its' affiliated characters, concepts and locations belong to Yoko Matsushita and I am earning nothing but the sole satisfaction of telling this story to you fine people.

**A/N: **More filler people! Still, I love the banter and I'm hoping it helps reader's feel a little more involved in the characters. Pointless conversations like the following flesh the character's in my humble opinion. Anyway, no warnings for this chapter. Unless you find goochy conversations to be offensive. If so, I do apologize. And you have been warned. Do not sue me for the root rot. God bless.

"**Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down." –Unknown**

**~ X ~**

**Tsuzuki**

I ran into Watari as I was leaving the doctors office.

"How were things with Dr. Squirrel?" He asked with a smile, holding out a cup of coffee towards me. Watari… well, what can I say about him that you don't already know? A rather unusual looking guy; slightly taller than myself with a gentle, mischievous face and long blond wavy hair that he inherited from his gaijin**(1)** mother. Yutaka Watari was, and remains to this day a dynamic, upbeat, wholly undeniable force to be reckoned with. He wore wide, frameless glasses but sometimes, such as when we would go out, he would put in contacts. Having been born in Kyoto and then raised in part in Osaka, he possessed what he described as an 'inaccurate' Kansai dialect, which for lack of a better definition is informal, twangy and brash. He wasn't truly handsome, but he was so flashy and confident that it took awhile to figure that out.

We had always gotten along well. I suppose because we had a lot in common. We were both sort of laid back and didn't take things too seriously and whenever I did have a fit of the blues, Watari would simply crack a joke and a beer and get me back on track. We both preferred dating men to women, which had been welcome news to me since I had been the only certified bisexual in the Summons department before Watari came along. Believe you me; we'd had many deep and meaningful discussions concerning it. It was Watari who reassured me that those feelings were okay and that the gender of someone wasn't what we fell in love with; it was the person. I felt better about myself after that.

He had always been kind to me but it still came as a surprise to find that he'd waited until after work just to see me out of my appointment. I smiled, thinking how fortunate I was to be surrounded by such people.

Watari's taste in clothing was a little eccentric and he was in top form that night; a gray pair of fashionably ripped jeans, tied off at the hips with a wide belt, a black leather singlet top held together across the chest by thick cords (gaping open at the belly) and a pair of black lace up boots, which accentuated the length of his slender, already ridiculously long legs. As always, the entire unconventional ensemble was topped off with his trademark fingerless biker gloves.

During the past year or so, Watari's attire had become increasingly more unusual, to the point that I had to wonder if he was simply pushing his luck, to see if he could get away with it. Wouldn't have been the first time he'd tried to stir up trouble, just for the fun of it. (The Ministry had no dress code but the higher up's still preferred their staff to look 'presentable'.)

My wardrobe on the other hand, was far more work appropriate. Some might even say dull, in comparison. I usually wore a black suit (un-ironed, owing of course to my slovenly ways), with a white shirt and messily knotted tie; a pair smudged loafers and a much beloved ink-black trenchcoat thrown over top. The most effort I put into getting dressed of a morning was perhaps running a wet comb through my hair, to try and get my coif to stay down. Satirically, Watari nearly always made it to work before me, though his wardrobe mining had to take a good half hour in some cases. Just another of those unsolvable mysteries of the Summons Department.

I finished looking over his chosen attire and smiled as my eyes came into realignment with his own. "Hey Watari. You didn't have to wait around for me."

Watari smirked as he swayed his head to the side, conveying a coy, if entirely put upon expression of bashfulness. "Ya really don't know, do ya? Oh well… I suppose it can't be helped. I can only hope that one of these days, you'll understand why I do these things and reciprocate my feelings in kind."

"Cut it out." I scolded, accepting the still proffered coffee and spinning the mug about so that the handle rested in the cup of my left hand. "Anyway, I really appreciate it. I'm sure you had better things to be doing."

Watari shrugged. "Not really. Besides, I figured after a talk with the shrink, ya could always use some cheering up. What did he make you do; look at a bunch of ink blots and talk about ya toilet habits?"

"Ink blots, yes. Toilet habits no, thank god."

"Hnh. Well, I guess it'll take some time before he gets to the real crux of your problems. Come on, let's head out to the garden and have a chat." He noticed I wasn't partaking of my coffee and his dark brows furrowed a little. "You _can _drink that, you know. There's nothing in it."

As to why I was hesitating, Watari was considered by most and none so much as himself mind, to be something of a mad scientist and it was an infamously immoral habit of his to test out his potions and formula's on the ministry staff. This was often done through the spiking of any food and beverages he offered. Sometimes, even when you were feeling particularly vulnerable, (_Especially_ may be the more appropriate adjective here) it was best to check.

"Are you sure?" I further questioned, gazing at him sidelong with mounting suspicion. He made a show of being embarrassed by deliberately avoiding eye contact with me.

"All right, you're onto me. I put a dash of scotch in." He hefted a greatly exaggerated sigh of defeat, dropping his arms downward. "I just thought ya might appreciate a little alcohol based therapy after a session with the Squirrel, is all. No hard feelin's, mate."

"None in the slightest. Cheers." I said, raising the cup in offering before then taking a sip. I relished the sharp taste of the scotch behind the coffee and felt my shoulders and upper back relax, almost mechanically. "Oh yeah… that's the ticket."

Watari winked, which was his well renowned trademark habit and hooked his arm through mine casually. "Figured ya would appreciate it. Now come on, let's go and relax for a while."

After attaining a cup of coffee for himself, Watari led me out to the Ministry Garden. Because Hades is an Intermediate realm, the cherry blossoms of the many Sakura trees exist in eternal bloom. We experience seasons, just the same as the Waking World but the temperature doesn't tend towards the extreme cold. Most thought we were fortunate because of this but I on the other hand was inclined to feel that the entire thing was just a little unnatural. All 'life' that existed within the Intermediate realm can be most acutely compared to the likes of the Hanged man of the tarot cards; the meaning of which, if you are unfamiliar, is eternal suspension. Nothing changed; not the seasons, not the trees, nor the faces of the once living that inhabited the Waking World. Nothing…

It did serve to remind me that we Shinigami possessed human emotions, if anything. Feelings, friendships… these were the things that turned and changed when nothing else did and so, as you can imagine, they were of extreme importance. I remembered my feelings concerning my waning relationship with Watari and that heavy sensation came to bear upon my chest once more. Little by little, I told myself, I would pick up the pieces that had fallen and set them right. I would rethread those buttons I had mistakenly slipped through the wrong holes and realign my life again. I would start here, one small step to reconnect with my dear friend whom I had seemingly neglected in favor of what was easy, comfortable and familiar.

"Watari, is there something troubling you?" I asked, once we had seated ourselves down on one of the many white decorative tables littered beneath the weeping Sakura. I suppose because the majority of Ministry employees are from an older generation, we are all in the habit of referring to one another by our family name. Hisoka, being the most recent Ministry addition was one of the very few who was addressed by his given name, simply because he was of the current generation, in which it was the norm.

Watari blinked at me from over the lip of his coffee cup, clearly confused. "Uh? Troubling _me_?" It is quite true that Watari never seemed troubled about much of anything. "I was gonna ask you the same question." He concluded, slipping a small bottle of scotch from his inside jacket pocket and adding a generous dollop to his own coffee.

Another thing Watari and I had in common; we both enjoyed throwing back a few. Perhaps a few too many on occasions, if I am to be brutally honest.

I took a moment to condense my thoughts appropriately, tracing my finger about the lip of my cup as I did so. "Ever since Kyoto," I began, hoping quite desperately that I would not insult Watari in my questioning his behavior. " I feel as though you and I have been drifting apart. I wonder… did I perhaps do something to offend you?"

Watari's eyebrow shot up into his forehead, to the degree where I thought it might have indeed launched itself directly into his hair. "What's this about all of a sudden?" He smiled knowingly, leaning across the table as though sharing small confidences and swirled his index finger in a circular motion. "Don't tell me the Squirrel is putting the old guilt treatment on you? Man, he really is a demon behind all that nice talk…"

I waved my hands to and fro, dissuading his assumption. "No, he hasn't been getting in my ear. We just talked about a few things that have been on my mind. And you and I… we really haven't seen much of each other, even less after I came back from the Shikigami world." I lowered my eyes towards the table, feeling suddenly and unaccountably ashamed of myself for having taken Watari's continued friendship for granted. "I thought maybe you were mad at me, or you weren't interested in being friends anymore."

I had intended to phrase myself with a greater degree of articulation, to say what I really felt but the expression that had suddenly unfurled on Watari's face disturbed my thought process and I faltered my wording. His irritation with me, if it had been only a bud until then, was bursting into full bloom before my eyes. He drew himself up, inhaling through his nose in such a way that I supposed he was forcefully restraining himself from reacting with impatience and leveled his finger at me.

"Stop right there." He ordered, his accented voice low and dangerous. "When in the Hell did I ever say such a thing to you?"

I had been afraid of this very reaction and as such found it quite impossible to reply until I had effectively calmed my nerves. "Well, you didn't but… it's just… I was worried."

"You're letting yer insecurities get the better of you again." Watari said, settling back in his seat and raising his cup in order to sip from it. I can't say exactly what he was thinking; but he seemed to be peering into nothingness with his angular face creased in the corners of his eyes and mouth from strain. And then he let out a heavy breath, and gazed down into his coffee cup with what I took as a look of great disconcertment. "We work in different areas, Tsuzuki. I'm holed up in the lab a great deal of the time. If we don't happen to see each other much, it's because our timetables don't exactly mesh. That doesn't mean I don't _want _to see you."

This was welcome news to me and I'm sure my delight at hearing it was written across my features. "Really?"

"Yes, really." Said Watari, speaking very gently as though addressing a distressed child. "_You're_ the one who's hard to get a hold of. Back when ya first partnered up with the kid, I figured it was best to just take a step back and let that relationship find its' footing." He smiled in what I understood to be a wistful sort of manner as he gazed down towards the table, resting his cheek upon the ridges of his closed fist. "I admit… I'm kinda jealous. Until then I had ya all to myself."

I have always been a childish person; too often do I consider things only from my own point of view. It had never once occurred to me that perhaps Watari had felt the same way as I had. Oh sure, he'd mentioned it cavalierly but Watari was one of those frustrating people with whom you needed to read between the lines, otherwise their true thoughts and intentions were never brought to light. Though I will admit, this was somewhat hypocritical when you consider just how he had spoken to me, only moments ago.

"You've had similar concerns about us drifting apart and still you call _me _insecure?" I said, deciding not to beat about the bush. Watari, for whatever reason, didn't bite the provocatively dangling bait and continued directing his gaze ever downward, his smile uncharacteristically serious.

"I felt a little lonely, is all. The _Kinki _area is quiet, so I run it solo. I don't have a partner to fall back on when you're not around." He lifted his head in order to meet my eyes and waved his hand about. "Don't get me wrong, it's been great having Chikawa around the past few months but you and I… well… we got a different sort of connection, don't you think?"

Chikawa had just transferred into the Summons Department three months ago, from another area of the Ministry and was currently studying under Watari in order to assume the role of both medic and scientific analysis specialist, when Watari himself was unavailable. Chikawa had died at the age of either eighteen or nineteen and had a strange, rather endearing habit of following Watari about like a baby duckling. (I can't imagine Watari at all minded.)

"Mmm. Yeah, you're right." I agreed, locking eyes with Watari with naked sincerity. "I wish you would have told me this sooner, Watari."

The blond shrugged lazily, resting back in his chair with the coffee cup perched in hand and eyes shut. "Oi, you know me. I don't much like to complain." He sipped from his spiked beverage before continuing. "Besides, it would have been utterly juvenile of me, to be jealous of Bon! It's done you both a world of good to become so close. I'm damn happy to see that! I really am."

I nodded, clutching the steaming ceramic mug between both hands and feeling the heat from the steam press against the skin of my face. "It _does _do me so much good, Watari but Hisoka's not the only friend I want and need." I set the cup down suddenly and reached across the table to take Watari's free hand between both my own. I'm not sure to whom this came as more of a surprise. "I'm sorry. I've been neglecting you and I didn't even realize it."

I could tell that this act had made Watari slightly uncomfortable. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes had shifted sideways as though he had been suddenly and unaccountably consumed by interest in a weed to his immediate left. "'S'all right. Like I said, we've both been busy."

"It shouldn't matter!" I exclaimed, with a heavy feeling in my heart, which brought to mind a story my sister told me so many years ago. A fisherman, she said, learns of the betrayal of his wife and so he returns to the sea in his small boat, as it is in his nature to do and starts to fish by dragging his net through the water. The troubles of his heart are so great however that the fish speed away from him, slipping through his fingers before he is able to get a hold on them and his net becomes so entangled by weed that he is eventually pulled beneath the currents by its' immeasurable weight and drowned. To comb the reeds from our nets is to clear our minds of all sad and mournful thoughts, lest they do us in; that is the moral of that particular story. We must not follow our sadness down to whence such thoughts spring. Too long I had been lost beneath those stirring tides of the ocean and it had been only recently that I'd finally felt myself beginning to rise to the surface, my fingers grazing above the line of the waves and actually touch the air above. Looking at Watari that day, realizing just how far down I had been dragged, was like pulling free the last tendril of weed from the tangled mesh that had been my mind for the past year.

"I don't know about you but I've always thought of you as probably my very closest friend." I said, finding it incredibly important that he understand this; candid though it was. Strange though I'm sure you might find such a comparison, I had come to view Watari's presence in my afterlife, the same way in which you grow accustomed to a certain freckle or marking upon your skin; for better for worse, you always knew where you could find it. He was a dependable, stable element; the kind of friend you could not talk to for weeks and then pick right back up where you left off. In other words, the kind of friend you could all too easily take for granted.

Watari obviously had not been expecting to hear this and he stared at me for some time without saying anything, his face as soft and poised as usual but his mind whirring so quickly I imagined I could hear the faint stirring of distant machinery.

"Well… that's how I think of you too but I never said it aloud because I didn't ever suspect I meant the same to you." I was quite relieved to see him smile and it was probably as close to shyness as Watari was capable. "That's quite an admission."

I returned the smile, distributing a squeeze to Watari's gloved hand. "Let's promise here and now to always be honest with one another. And we'll spend more time together, just like the old days!"

Watari smirked mischievously as he gave my fingers an affectionate shake before then releasing them. "They _were _the best times, weren't they? Probably the best of my life." His amber eyes surveyed the horizon nostalgically before, with a chuckle, he ushered me in close. "You remember when we decided to spend New Years drinking in the Ministry?"

"How could I forget?!" I laughed, recalling both the overall hilarity of what we had done and the ever-present fear that we would be caught and stripped of our jobs. "You got stuck going through the transom and I thought we'd have to call the fire department to come get you out!"

"And then we got completely hammered and plastered all those pages from a couple of nudie magazines all over the walls of Tatsumi's office! The look on his _face _the next day!" Watari slapped the table with mirth, almost falling backwards off of his chair he was laughing so hard. "I didn't think his nose was ever going to clot! My sides almost burst for laughing!"

"Do you think he ever found out it was us?"

"I was surprised that we weren't caught actually." Watari confided, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes with his index finger before then sliding his glasses back on. "Knowing Tatsumi, I would have thought he'd have had that vomit you left behind DNA tested."

"Hey, don't make fun!" I grumbled, my face flushing so violently it could have reheated my coffee. Suffice to say, blushing was one of my very bad very _frequent_ habits. "It was the turning around that did it!"

"We sure did get through a lot of tequila…" Watari said, placing a finger thoughtfully against his chin. And then he gave a very theatrical sigh, as though these particular recollections were indeed as lovely as any he had ever experienced. "How very young we were…"

In reality, I had been eighty-eight years of age at the time and Watari had been forty-one, though you wouldn't think so to look at us. Watari had died at twenty-eight, older than I had been and still somehow seemed more worldly than I. Though I was, in fact over forty years his senior. "We should do it again!" I blurted out, caught up in the excitement of our reminiscing. "To the Chief's office this time!"

The usually plucky and carefree Watari actually bit his lip with obvious reluctance at my suggestion. He may have been spirited but he certainly wasn't reckless. Not… _most_ of the time anyway. "No thanks; not unless I think he deserves it." He lips slowly quirked up at the corners, taking on that familiar roguish grin he was ever so partial to. Watari was really rather expressive, on account of his wide mouth. Often he was quite unable to get away with the majority of schemes he pulled, simply because he couldn't contain his enthusiasm and or excitement. "Maybe if he fires us we'll go through with it."

"It's a deal!" I crowed, reaching across the table to slap Watari's open hand. "I won't back out!"

In all likelihood, if such a thing were to go ahead, I probably _would _back out lickity-split. Losing a job in the Summons Section, hardly meant you were likely to find employment elsewhere. If you were unable to reassume a position in another department, chances were you would be moved on, so to speak. And I wasn't quite ready to head off on that particular venture on account of having plastered my bosses' office with pictures of naked women, thankyou very much.

"Okay. But you can buy the magazines this time." Said Watari, in a rather caveat tone of voice. I felt my face go red just _considering _how I might have followed through with such a task!

"No way, that's not fair!" I whined, trying to ignore Watari as he patently laughed at my flushed features. "You _borrowed _most of them from your ex-boyfriend anyway! I don't wanna go into a newsagent and buy so much pornography! People will think I'm some sort of psycho perve!" I all but sobbed at the thought, covering my face with my hands as a means to veil my embarrassment.

Watari rolled his eyes, seeming amused by my childishness. "All right, we'll go half and half. He smiled slyly at me, just to show that he wasn't yet done teasing me. "You could always ask _Aki_. I'm sure he'd lend you some, especially if he knew what it was for."

Though I wasn't at all sure it was possible, my face grew increasingly hotter and I shrank down further into my seat, meaning to hide behind my raised knees. Aki, you see, was a guy that _both _Watari and I had previously dated. (On separate occasions, of course!) We'd been broken up for a long time now but a lot of those old feelings still remained. "I'm not asking Aki for porno's! He might get the wrong idea!"

"Well, if it ever comes to that, we'll figure something out." Watari laughed, finding obvious pleasure in my embarrassment. He could be malicious like that; he derived great pleasure from making other people squirm with embarrassment. The more reposed and refined the person, the bigger the laugh, so far as he was concerned. Tatsumi and I were his two favorite toys, for very different reasons.

I gradually felt the heat leave my face and I straightened up in my chair, curling my fingers about the handle of my coffee cup, raising the last few dregs of cooling beverage to flow back between my lips. "I don't know about you but that time might come for me sooner rather than later…" I said despondently, dabbing at my lips with the crumpled handkerchief that I kept in my pants pocket. "The last few years I've made quite a nuisance of myself."

It was quite true. During the course of the past three years, I had destroyed the Ministry library _twice_ (though I'd had some help the second time around, thankyou very much _Terazuma_) been possessed by the powerful demon Saagatanasu (and decimated almost half of the Ministry as a result), broken about a dozen pot plants (and one incredibly stingy vending machine) and had brought the threat of Muraki into our afterlives. Was it any wonder that Tatsumi was marking off the days until my retirement?

Watari set down his coffee cup, surveying me with that expression he often wore when he thought I was perhaps getting a little carried away with feeling sorry for myself. I only knew this, because he often berated me for this very same thing afterwards. "I know the Chief gives you a drilling sometimes but I'm sure you realize just how fond of you he really is. You guys have known each other for seventy years after all. And he always goes to town for you when it really matters." He smiled supportively, twirling a thick strand of his hair about his thumb and finger. "Believe you me, if anyone was ta get fired for being a nuisance, I think it would be yours truly_._"

I wanted to insist that this wasn't any truth to this but sometimes Watari's laid back, do-as-I-please attitude made it difficult to argue in his favor. "Well, you _do _make it a point to use most of the staff as guinea pigs for your formula's." It seemed the most honest way to reply and really, if he were to be fired for such a thing, he would only have himself to blame.

Watari huffed, tossing his hair back out of his line of sight as though my words had no verity whatsoever and had been, to some extent, offensive. "If any of you philistines were as committed as I am to making this crazy world of ours a less confusing place, then you would be kind enough to offer yourselves up and _then _I wouldn't have to chase you about all the time." He ran a hand up through his bangs, giving them a little extra body and sighed in a manner that suggested this conversation just wasn't worth having. "Be that as it may, I'll have you informed that I've cut right back on the unapprised human participant testing in the last year, thankyou very much." Watari shook his finger at me, adopting a very stern expression that I still refused to buy into. "I'm trying my hand at being constructive in my tinkering endeavors now. Hence the all new and improved armory!"

"And Konoe _has _recognized that. I think he almost fell backwards off of his chair when you put forward that application."

"Why should it be such a surprise to anyone?" Said Watari, looking quite offended. "I _do _have a degree as a mechanical engineer. I only dabble in chemistry on the side…"

This was an outright lie and we both knew it. "Watari… be honest. It consumes _most _of your time."

He offered me a look of polite indignation. "What I have learnt in my time as head of the Kinki sector, Tsuzuki, is that you do, in fact, have quite a bit of time on your hands. Without a creative mind, one tends to lean ever so slightly into the realm of boredom." He gave a nonchalant shrug. "Whatever the case, it's a moot point. All chemical related endeavors are on hold for the immediate time being."

"Even… _'that'_ drug?" I questioned, with mounting skepticism. Watari glanced to the side and clenched his teeth. This was the classical 'guilt' gesture and I recognized it for what it was immediately. "Watari!"

"'_That' _drug… is an exception." He stated, clearly not caring to expand on it.

"It's the most useless formula of the lot!" I exclaimed without mercy, slapping my coffee cup against the table in order to accentuate my point. "An invisibility potion; fine. Body switching potion _could _come in useful maybe… but a sex-change potion?!"

"There are people in the world who _do _get sex-changes, Tsuzuki." Watari bluntly pointed out.

"_Yes_ but are _you_, one of them?"

Now, he looked truly affronted. "I don't mean _me _personally… although I'm very intrigued to know how the female mind works. What man isn't?"

"Whatever." I huffed, leaning over to flick Watari directly in the center of his forehead. "Just don't test it on me, okay?"

He winked at me, smiling. "You got it."

I laughed and then looked at Watari in what I imagine was a tender sort of way. It felt good to talk about menial, stupid things again, something I wasn't able to do in the company of my more serious acquaintances, such as Hisoka and Tatsumi. "So, we're cool then?"

Watari returned my smile with interest. "Yeah, we're cool."

I wanted to choose my next words very carefully because when Watari was angry, he was a man who could hurl his words as cold and hard as stones. Some might have seen him as a foolish person but he truly wasn't ignorant of life's genial happenings, as many intellectuals are characteristically prone to being. I felt as though the thin tapestry that bound us together had been repaired, yet only loosely; so that the smallest tug might cause the entire thing to unravel yet again. But even knowing this, how could I simply ignore the erstwhile feeling in my stomach that screamed 'something still isn't right! You must make it right!' Because I could not let sleeping dogs lie, I suppose. I could not rest reassured if I suspected some cards lay hidden beneath the table. And Watari's mouth had not quite curved up at the corners, like it did when he was truly happy. This was his smile for other's benefit and he wanted to assure me that everything had been said. But I would not be deceived. I _needed _to know. Because to not know… would lead to bitter feelings and I couldn't stand having that stand between us.

I lowered my eyes and dipped my head, being purposefully formal and respectful so as to prevent him becoming agitated with me once more. I'm sure it sounds strange to you that I would address my close friend in such a manner because in this generation young people are accustomed to being blunt and simply saying how they feel. But in my day and even in Watari's youth, we denoted respect by lowering our eyes, our voice and our heads and if we believed ourselves to be causing some offense, apologized immediately for having caused such trouble. And though most of our interactions were not like this at all, it seemed to me the safest route to take and most assuredly the only means though which Watari would actually take my words seriously.

"Forgive me for being so troublesome," I began and Watari must have immediately recognized my tone for what it entailed because he certainly didn't look pleased by my persistence. "But Watari… I honestly feel as though there is something you still wish to say. The corners of your mouth look as though a loose string is holding them up! And there's a line between your eyebrows as deep as a rut in the road."

Watari was a little bit vain concerning his appearance and I saw him immediately reach up to feel the lines that had formed between his brows and I had to force myself not to laugh at his predictable reaction.

"_Please_ Watari… I want you to be honest with me."

"Why, Tsuzuki! It sounds as if you _want_ me to find a reason to be cross with you." Watari's lips quirked slightly, to indicate how amused he was by my behavior. I felt grateful that my carefully thought out words had made the impression I intended.

"Of course I don't want you to be cross with me." I said honestly, shaking my head. "That's just the point! From now on, we should be honest with one another. You're my friend, Watari. I wanna know what's on your mind."

Watari's gentle features shifted to adopt a more serious timbre and he leaned both elbows upon the table, delicately bridging his fingers together beneath his chin. It never ceased to amaze me just how incredibly patient and mature he was capable of being, when and if he chose to make the effort.

"Tsuzuki… I want you to understand that if perhaps I don't tell you things, it's only because I feel that they are things that do not need to be said." He reached across the table and gently patted the side of my chin. "You seem to feel that if something were to remain unsaid it will only grow and I'll wind up hating you, or some such nonsense."

I felt that old pressure upon my chest again and allowed my eyes to drop downward, as though I were appraising the inside of the now empty coffee cup. In reality, I simply didn't want Watari to bear witness to the pain I'm sure would have been so blatantly obvious in my gaze. "I've seen that sort of thing happen before, Watari. That's why I… if you ever want to tell me off for something or-"

Watari groaned, leaning back from me so he could liberally caress the lines of his forehead. "Tsuzuki, I wish you wouldn't speak like that. You're not a bad person and I would never tell you off. Not for no good reason anyway."

"Okay… okay I understand." I nodded gently, adhering to his comfort but still feeling distinctly unsatisfied. I was sure something more had been left unsaid! You just had to work it out of Watari, like lancing a boil if I'm to use such a crude reference. "But won't you please tell me what's on your mind? Don't deny that there isn't something there because I can see it in your face now! Please… what is it…?"

He ran a hand over his head, seemingly exasperated. I thought for a moment that he was going to try and put me in my place again but it seemed as though I had finally poked a hole through that irritatingly thick outer wall of his. "All right. All right." He muttered, setting his arms down on table and crossing one over the other. "You want to know what's on my mind? I'll tell you. Even though I think it is supremely childish to even mention." He sighed looking increasingly more annoyed at having to explain himself. "I'm not angry at you. I'm angry with everything that happened right after we left Kyoto and returned to the Ministry last year."

I nodded, quietly relieved to hear him speaking of these matters at last. "I can understand why… that was a horrible time for everyone-"

"It was a horrible time for _you_, Tsuzuki." Watari stated, cutting me off with a curt gesture of his hand. "We all know that. God knows, it must play through ya mind most nights. It sure as Hell does mine." He looked me in the eyes and I saw a true flash of sadder emotions whirling there. It surprised me because he wasn't in the habit of coddling or appearing weak. "There is somethin' that has been bugging me. And I hate myself for feeling this way because the most important thing to me is that you're safe. In fact, I was so relieved that everything turned out all right in the end, that I didn't even start ta feel this way at all until much, _much _later. During the investigation into Bon's family, as it were, when the genes of that blasted snake infiltrated my body and brought up every ounce of anger it could leach out of me."

"And what is it that you felt?" I softly enquired; clenching my coffee cup so tightly it was a wonder it did not shatter between my palms.

Watari still looked very uncomfortable to even be discussing this and he glanced to the side, breaking eye contact before allowing himself to continue speaking. "Tsuzuki… why didn't ya thank _me_?"

I admit, this was quite lost on me and I wasn't at all sure how to reply. "… I… what do you mean…?" I felt foolish for not realizing and even more upset that Watari may have been hurt in my not remembering. He pushed himself to meet my eyes again and I was startled to see that he was frowning and seemed truly annoyed with me.

"Hisoka saved you from the fire of Kyoto University and Tatsumi protected you both with a shadow vortex. Undeniably, you owe them for your life. Heck, even the Chief thanked Tatsumi for whisking you out of the fire. But what do you suppose I'd been doing that whole time? As far as anyone's concerned… I wasn't even there." He sipped from his mug and I was shocked to see his hand was trembling. I suppose he was more upset by this then he was actually letting on. "I've always been the most useless of the Shinigami."

"Watari, that's not true!" I said immediately.

"Like Hell it ain't. And answer my question; where do you suppose I was, while all that was going on?"

I shrank back in my seat a little, feeling quite intimidated by his attitude. I couldn't understand how our conversation had taken this potentially dangerous turn; but it was perfectly clear to me what answer I was expected to provide. "Judging from the tone of your voice, I'd say you were there the whole time."

He turned his upper body around so that we faced one another entirely, adding weight to what he was saying. "When you broke down in the Ministry ruins, Tatsumi and the Kid lost it too. The mental overload was too much for Bon and he collapsed. Tatsumi's overload was a mixture of things, _mostly financial_ but he was about as useful as chicken nuggets at a vegetarian convention. I _tried _to reach you but there was so much rubble in the way." He bit his lip, quite possibly irritated at memories that were still so fresh in all of our minds and the futility of that entire situation. "And then Muraki appeared to take you away and I _ran _to try and get to you, to get you _away _from him. I ran so hard and I called for you… I kept my head when everyone else lost it. I was still useless in the end but I took the situation seriously enough to understand that I couldn't _possibly _lose it at that moment. It was _way _too important."

I confess to having no memory of that day at all. When Mariko Ikaruga had been killed by Suzaku's attempts to save my life, I felt an unexpected physical and quite literal snap reverberate through my skull and my body felt different. I may have lost my mind. No rational thought echoed in my head. I passed into a deranged, catatonic state, only coming to my senses within the bowels of Shion University's basement complex. I had no idea what might have occurred before then but it did seem greatly unfair for Watari to have not received any sort of recompense for his actions during the time of my kidnap. "And no one acknowledged that?"

Watari slapped the table, clearly frustrated. "I don't _want_ it to be acknowledged. I don't _need_ to be patted on the back for trying to save my _friend_. I want _you _to know that I didn't give up on you. I've _never _wanted you out of my life." He swallowed in something of a thoughtful manner, looking down towards the table. I guess he was embarrassed because he burst altogether too quickly back into recounting his version of events, stumbling over the first few words in the process. "When we reached the University and you tried to take your life in the Hellfire…" He must have noticed my emotion at this and reached across to take my hands. "I'm so sorry… if I had been quicker, if I'd done everything I possibly could have back at the Ministry, it never would have come down to that. I thought all this time, you must have resented me for it…"

I felt my eyes well until everything became blurry and the weight of the tears forced them down onto my cheeks. I didn't bother trying to hide them from Watari because I felt it said so much, when I could only say so little. The fact he hadn't spoken to anyone of it… that he was noble about not wanting to be rewarded for it… "I didn't even know that you tried for me. No one else was obviously comprehensive enough to have known and you… you never _tell _anyone these things."

Watari squeezed my hands and offered me a compassionate smile, before continuing onward with his version of events. "There in the university basement… I have… a bad history with fire. I was terrified… and I despise myself for not going in there after you. We stood there looking in, myself, Tatsumi and Bon. We reasoned that you had done this with the intent of taking your own life. And Tatsumi, he –" And this I'll admit was truly frightening because I knew Watari had a temper but I had never before seen him in a real rage. And this… this was only his memory of it and the rush of emotion I saw spreading out to take supremacy of his features was overwhelming. He looked positively ruthless in his anger. "– he said because it was what you wanted, it was okay to let you die! As though it's fine to allow a person in a severe emotional state go through with the taking of his or her own life! He didn't realize just how _precious _our time is here! I'm sure that you were in a lot of pain Tsuzuki. I _do _understand. I really _do_. Sometimes it just seems easier to let go. And I'm sorry I was so selfish. But in that moment, I could have knocked Tatsumi's bloody teeth from his mouth. I grabbed him by his collar and I _screamed _at him. The absolute _shit _he was coming out with! Using _your _death as _his _punishment, he said, I just couldn't believe it! I couldn't believe he would even think that letting you leave us was the better solution. And I was angry at you!" He narrowed his eyes at me. "That you didn't care about us enough to want to live. Even though I understood the state that you were in. I wanted you to fight and be strong because Goddammit, how would _I _get along in this goddamn place without you? No one else around here has a sense of humor!"

This elicited a smile from me and Watari unable to resist returned it. This seemed to ease the tension between us and I felt my shoulder's relax, as if cooling water had been poured down over my neck and back. "Tatsumi said… that he considered letting me die. That he hesitated in pulling me out of the fire." I looked into Watari's eyes, still so vulnerable in the face of his remaining anger. "Would he have done it at all, if you hadn't said anything?"

He shrugged, curling his lip disdainfully. "I can't say. Perhaps he would have… perhaps not. His feelings of love are different to mine."

I felt my face predictably flush with heat again; though I was quite sure Watari was not speaking of these emotions in a romantic sense. But then again, you never quite know with him… "Love…?"

"Yes, _love_, doofus." He smirked, reaching across to smack me across the head. "I didn't want my buddy to die. As soon as you got out of that fire, I stayed by your bed until you woke up. I just wanted to see the old Tsuzuki I knew."

"Yeah…" I murmured, smiling shyly as I soothed down my now ruffled hair. "You were the first person I saw when I woke up." I smirked at him, relieved to see that he no longer looked cross with me. Getting everything out on the table seemed to have done him some good. Like scooping out water from the bottom of a boat. His fingers, which had been so stiff and rigid, now gracefully unfurled from beneath his palms, releasing the tension he had clasped within to the surrounding breeze. "No wonder you looked so tired."

"Well, watching you snore beat completing the case notes. Not that I could have slept until I was sure you were going to be okay. My feelings since that day have been…" Apparently he couldn't decide exactly what his feelings had been so instead he just trailed off kind of uncomfortably. I got his meaning however.

"Watari, I'm so sorry…" I said. "Everything you did for me and I…"

He held up his hand, cutting me off. "I only did what I wanted to do for you, Tsuzuki. It was selfish too… because I didn't want to lose my best friend. I can't imagine the afterlife without you. But since then, our friendship hasn't been the same either." He gave me what I understood to be something of a pained smile, as though he were ashamed of himself for even admitting to this. "I wanted to tell you that I… that I didn't _not _try for you. _I _was worried that you… you might have thought that I stood by. Because the gestures Tatsumi and Hisoka made were so much more direct. So much grander in scale."

The wind changed direction, turning the warm breeze against my face and causing the longer strands of my hair to glide upward from the nape of my neck. I shut my eyes, savoring this pleasurable sensation, feeling that the breeze itself had not been the only thing to change in the past few minutes. Between two men who kept their friends close and their secrets closer, there are feelings that will always remain unsaid. Some things are too private to discuss with anyone. But I felt as though we had come a long way, Watari and I. We had been _honest _with one another, which opened up doors long since welded shut and out of use. As I opened my eyes again to take him in, I felt as though I were looking deeper into his mind and heart than I'd ever seen before. And the affection I felt for him swam through my veins like a pleasurable flush. Our friendship was something I had always taken for granted and that in itself said so much to me. I was secure in Watari. I trusted him with my friendship, with my feelings, more than I did anyone else. And it seemed imperative to me then, more than ever, that it was time I repaid him in kind, for having afforded me that piece of mind I had unknowingly relied upon for so many years.

"But now I understand… if it hadn't been for you, I wouldn't be here at all." I beamed at him; eyes swimming with tears that I suppose hadn't yet been afforded opportunity to fall. "You and Hisoka… you both didn't accept that my death would have been better for me. Watari…" The need to express my emotions in something other than words gripped me like a heart attack and without so much as thinking of it, I was climbing to my feet. Watari, seeming to sense what I was after, mirrored my movements and we met halfway around the table in a long overdue embrace. "Is this why you've kept your distance all this time? You thought I resented you…?"

"Didn't you?" Watari asked, his voice muffled against my hair.

I shook my head, gripping his shoulders still the more tightly. "No one told me what you did but… I never for a second thought that you did _nothing_." I leaned away, so that I could look him in the eyes again. "Watari, I know you. I knew even before now that you would have tried desperately for me." I ran my hand down the back of his head. "Thankyou. Thankyou so much for wanting me to live. I'm happy… that I mean enough to you that you thought life would be that much more difficult without me."

Watari's smile contested my own for the warmth and gratitude it expressed as he drew me close again, chin resting upon the parting of my hair. "You underestimate yourself, kiddo. You always have." He squeezed me tighter; as though we were not already embracing hard enough to cut off one another's blood flow entirely. "Dammit, I've missed you so much. You haven't been anywhere but I feel as though you and I have been opposing magnets for some time."

_Opposing magnets_… A simile only the science crazy Watari would use. "Let's spend more time together from now on, okay?"

"Sure. …" He chuckled under his breath, fingers patting my back as though assuaging the frustrated tempter of a child. "Hey, you're not gonna try and kiss me, are ya?"

"I almost feel like it." I murmured with a smile, snuggling closer.

Watari laughed, petting my head in a placating manner. "Poor bugger. You _have _been lonely."

"Well," I mused, twirling a strand of his hair about my finger introspectively. "We did pledge that if we were both still single by my 100th birthday, we'd try going on a date." Incidentally, I'm ninety-seven at the present time, so there's still a three year reprieve.

"I believe the deal was that I would deflower you but… yeah, same thing in my case really."

"Watari!" I shrieked pulling away from him and slapping his arm. "Don't be gross!"

He laughed as he ducked away from me, sliding himself back down into his seat, throwing his booted feet up onto the tabletop casually. "Hey, now I'm hurt. You don't find me attractive?"

He was trying now to embarrass me and I wasn't about to let him succeed. I adopted a cool expression as I seated myself again, swatting at his feet as they obscured my vision. "You rock my socks, Watari but I don't think it would do our friendship any good."

"We could be friends with benefits." The blond purred, offering me a casual, deliberately provocative wink. Just thinking about utilizing that particular aspect into our relationship made me uncomfortable to say the least.

"AHH! NO!" I cried, cowering behind my hands. "It's so sleazy!"

"You're right. What with your bloody old fashioned morals, we'd have to get married first." Watari laughed. "See? That sex-change potion could come in handy after all!"

"That's such a frightening thought, Watari! And I'm not even sure which one of us would be the girl!"

Watari scoffed, as though the answer was obvious. "You, of course. My arms are more muscular than yours and I'm taller."

"That's only because you swim all the time." I said, pouting, quite offended to think that I was so feminine it was only natural that I would be the one to wear the wedding dress. I had the shorter hair _and _the more toned upper torso!

"Swimming doesn't make you taller." Watari said, rolling his eyes. I narrowed my eyes at him and swatted at his feet again.

"I was talking about your arms, idiot! Besides, you're the one with the long hair!" Although, he didn't look so much a girl as he did a reincarnated (infinitely better groomed) Viking. A Viking with glasses, that is.

Watari waved a chunk of his hair at me. "And that automatically makes me a girl?"

"Well, it is usually only girls that have long hair." I said, leaning over to swish the errant waves from side to side. "Put two and two together."

Watari laughed. "You're right. I guess you and I are forever doomed to only and always be drinking buds."

"Yeah. Hey, speaking of drinking, you got any plans for tonight? Hisoka and I are making dinner together." It seemed as good an opportunity as any to bond. "You could… you know, pop in and lend a hand. We could throw back a few, smoke, catch up a bit more."

"That poor boy is never going to sleep again." Watari muttered, taking his glasses off and cleaning them with a rag he kept in one of his pockets for that very reason. I could understand where he was coming from. Whenever Watari and I got together, we _did _have a tendency to play up a bit… mostly to the annoyance and or embarrassment of everyone around us. Hisoka especially, whom we both loved to tease. "I _would_ join you guys but I've already made plans."

"Oh really?" I smirked, resting my chin in my palm and waggling my eyebrows suggestively. "Hot date…?"

Watari smirked as he slid his glasses back on. "Date, yeah. Hot? …that remains to be seen. If the back of my hair is flat come tomorrow you'll know whether he was a winner or not."

I gave him a comradely punch in the upper arm, trying to appear entirely supportive and curious as good guy friends do. I'd be lying however, if I said that I wasn't just that _teensy _bit envious.

"You sly Shinigami! So… is it a guy or a gal?"

"A lad." Watari returned my earnest clout with interest and then shook his finger in my face like a stern parent. "That's all I'm gonna tell ya."

He could be secretive when it came to the people he was dating. Possibly because I wasn't the smartest guy around, I had a habit sometimes of just blurting stuff out without really meaning to. Even though I'm sure he would have liked to tell me, Watari understood what was in my nature. He didn't need the rest of the Ministry (Tatsumi especially) finding out his business. "I wish I had your luck when it comes to getting dates…" I admitted, the canine ears integrated into my human form appearing on my head and slumping over, adding effective weight to my self-pitying proclamation.

Watari huffed air out from between his upper and lower rows of teeth, showing his distaste of what I had just said. "What do you mean _'luck'_?! Are you saying I _need _luck?"

I backpedaled so fast it was a wonder I didn't knock my chair over backwards. "No, that's not what I –"

He twisted his body sideways with an offended puff, exaggerating his offense for humors sake. I suppose he was trying to make me feel better. "I know I'm not the best looking guy around but I didn't realize I was such an abominable snow beast that I _needed _luck to get people to sit down to dinner with me."

His choice of words now had me laughing and I could see the corner of his own mouth betrayingly hitch upward. "Watari… you know what I mean. I wish I had your confidence. Maybe more people would approach me too."

"You're hardly a wilting wall flower, Tsuzuki." Watari exclaimed, with a deliberately overstated roll of his eyes. "The problem, if there is one, is that you seem unattainable. You may have picked up on this before now but the fact is my boy, that you are a rather good-looking sort." It may sound shallow, and it is but I liked hearing this. The individuals I usually received this sort of flattery from were… well, not the kinds of people you would ordinarily feel comfortable about accepting a compliment from without wondering what they might take in return. "So good looking in fact, that it makes other people feel insecure."

I sighed, not quite ready or willing to believe him at that stage. "I was just talking about this sort of thing with the doc. I keep wondering if I'm ever gonna find the right person for me…"

"When you least expect it." Watari looked at me with what I took to be a calculating smile and I suddenly felt like a pork chop being scrutinized by a famished hyena. "I can think of more than a few people who would be interested in filling the void in the meantime…"

"If you're talking about the Count, the answer is _no_." I said flatly, swiping my hands in front of myself to add emphasis. Watari smiled, pleased to find me so irritated and waggled his coffee cup in my direction.

"You never know… he could be quite studly under all that invisibility."

"He could look like Takeshi Kaneshiro for all I care." We both took a moment to sigh and bask in our appreciation of the aesthetic beauty otherwise known as Takeshi Kaneshiro. "Being attractive is not _nearly_ important enough." I concluded, once we'd moved beyond drooling and giggling like prepubescent monkeys.

"Well, isn't that a blessing considering how abominably hideous I am." Watari sniped, unscrewing the cap from his mini-scotch bottle and throwing back a nip.

"One bad turn of phrase and he never lets me forget it." I grumbled, catching the bottle as Watari tossed it to me. (Cap back on, naturally). I took a sip, biting back the sharp taste of the whisky. "If you recall, Muraki for example is a grade-A knockout but he's got the personality of a jackal."

"A jackal, huh? …Now that certainly conjures up a bizarre image." Watari linked his fingers together, one thumb twirling around the other as he flashed me a half-embarrassed, half-cheeky smile. "I _do_ love Kaneshiro-san. His mother was from Osaka, you know?"

"I _know_, Watari. I've been to see every one of his movies with you." In case it wasn't obvious by this stage, we were both big fans. "You have that headshot of him in the shower on your wall."

"Which _you _tried to steal!" He snapped, pointing an accusatory finger at me. I tossed the scotch bottle back towards him in a wide arc, forcing him to stretch way back in order to catch it successfully. "Careful, ya dumb monkey!"

"My point being," I continued, unfazed. "Is I'm sure that Kaneshiro-san is a lot lovelier in real life than either Muraki or the Count. But you can't always expect handsomeness and niceness to go hand in hand."

"_That's _for bloody sure!" Watari exclaimed, his eyes on some faraway point. I supposed he was thinking back on the good-looking guys he had been with who'd turned out to be nothing more than jerks and users. And I'm sorry to say, he wasn't the only one. I'd had my share of losers too, even if I'd never dedicated myself to much more than cuddling on the couch and necking round the necktie. Seeing my expression swim back towards the shore of despondency, Watari quickly dove across the table and roughly slapped my shoulder, hoisting me back above the surface, so to speak. "Cheer up, mate. There are _plenty _of nice, good-looking guys out there! Plenty of beautiful women for that matter, too! It _will _happen; you just gotta keep your chin up. And hey," He whacked his thumb confidently into the wall of his chest. "If you ever want me to set you up with someone, just let me know."

I grinned, pressing my hand against Watari's face and using this to push him back into his seat. "That's very generous Watari, but I don't need you to _donate_ one of your exes to me."

He groaned ostentatiously. "People who don't know when to accept charity never get anywhere. Still, the offer stands." He sculled the last of his coffee, eyes flickering down to appraise something that apparently, had just appeared behind me. "Say, looks like we ain't the only ones burning the overtime oil." He gestured to the front entrance of the Ministry as someone came belting down the stairs like a bat out of Hades.

"Isn't that your trainee?" I asked.

Watari nodded. "Yep. Recognize that blue hair anywhere." Adding, in an offhand manner, "Why kids have to experiment with weird hair colors, I'll never know." He waved his arm in a wide arc, adopting a singsong tone of voice. "Yoo-hoo! Chikawa-chan!"

Yoshimitsu Chikawa responded to this somewhat debasing summons and came racing towards us, a sheet of paper clutched in his hand. Even from where I was sitting I could see that not an inch of space was blank and the typeface was minute and scrunched together. The entire aura of the paper boded ill will and my instincts have usually always been pretty much on the mark.

"Oh thank god! I didn't think I was going to catch ya before you left, Tsuzuki-san!" Chikawa exclaimed as he reached us. He paused for a moment, leaning over, hands pressed to his knees whilst he caught his breath. "Heya, Sempai! You're here too." He flashed a trademark toothy grin at his supervisor, which Watari naturally returned. "I thought all the Shinigami would have left for the day."

"All the sensible ones have, mate." Watari said, earning a laugh from Chikawa. It's quite true that Watari and I did not make it a regular habit to put in much overtime if we could otherwise avoid it. Overtime clashed with happy hour at our favorite watering hole… conflict of interest, you understand and priorities must always be made priority!

"What's up?" I asked, once I was sure the boy could talk without his face turning as blue as his hair.

Chikawa straightened up, even offering me a brief courteous bow before addressing me again. "Well, I was just filing away some last minute notes…" He glanced over at Watari pointedly. "You know… about _'that' _thing."

Watari nodded seriously. "Of course. Go on."

Chikawa offered me an unconvincing sidelong smile, I suppose to assure me that they weren't in the midst of cooking up something that would soon find itself into the office coffee supply. I made a mental note to bring my own pot to work. "Well, I was just closing the file drawer, when I noticed that a fax had come in. It's marked 'Urgent'." He handed me the sheet of paper and I quickly donned my reading glasses, so I could skim through it. My eyesight is not bad for the most part but sometimes, especially of an evening, my eyes can become a little strained and so the glasses help me to focus. If I was doing a lot of reading, I would sometimes just leave them on after I was done without even really thinking about it, the magnification degree was so low. "I guess the Head Office just sent it straight over as soon as they were contacted."

"What does it say?" Watari asked, swinging his legs off of the table as though preparing to leap up and out of his seat at a moments notice.

"That the shit has hit the fan, big time." I said, continuing to pan over the details as I announced them. "There's been some sort of disturbance at the Tokyo Metropolitan Tachiagari **(2)** Library."

"Tachiagari?" Watari's brows quirked into a near perfect question mark. "I was there only last week. They have a pretty up to date science section." He scratched his chin thoughtfully with the tip of his index finger. "Not to mention the girl who worked at the front desk was something of a volume herself!"

I felt a bead of sweat roll down the side of my face. "Watari, that sort of behavior will get you arrested…"

Chikawa chuckled his appreciation of Watari's wit before turning back to me. "I called Chief Konoe and he said that Tsuzuki would probably still be around."

"And here I am." I stated with a complacent smile. Chikawa apparently missed the bluntness of my tone because he continued to smile at me in the manner of the never thwarted perpetually genki.

"Yep! Here you are." He grinned, displaying just about every tooth in his head. You'd think he'd just been sent out to invite me on a party his disposition was so sprightly. "Said he wants you over there ten minutes ago."

Watari smiled expectantly, awaiting whatever orders the Chief had delegated for him and received nothing other than a polite, vacant faced smile from Chikawa in return for his patience. I suppose it might have gone on for hours (Chikawa was the type of boy who could sit and smile cluelessly at someone until the cows came home, so enjoyable he found the activity) if Watari hadn't gotten sick up and fed of waiting. "Well? What about _me_? The boss knew I was staying behind too."

Chikawa jumped a little, as though rudely shaken out of dreamland. And though his smile didn't waver, I did not notice that his pupils had drifted sideways as though attempting to scrutinize the inside of his own skull. He tapped the tips of his index fingers together, obviously stalling for time. "Yes well… um… the Chief said Sempai is to go along as well. But… he's not expecting too much."

I hardly felt that Chikawa had been obligated to say this but sometimes the boy is so honest and direct, he can't help but regurgitate everything he's heard. Watari adopted an expression most akin to someone attending the bedside of a terminally ill relative.

"Gee, well that's sure a shot in the arm of self-esteem."

Chikawa laughed apologetically. "I'm sorry, Sempai. I don't think the Chief meant for it to upset you."

Watari looked at the boy as though he'd just suggested he weave a magic carpet out of his own pubic hair. "Upset me? Why should it _upset_ _me_? My own boss just said I'm about as useful as a fecal flavored Popsicle. I'll just walk it off."

I could only smile and pat Watari's arm in a conciliating manner, trying not to laugh at the sour expression on his face. "Chikawa, this really is an authentic Underdweller sighting, right?"

The boy shrugged, slinging both arms behind his back in a typical, nonchalant teenage gesture. "I couldn't say for certainty at this stage, Tsuzuki-san."

I groaned, sliding my glasses off and placing them delicately back within their case. "Look, I am _not_ about to go running off after another bloody alcoholic or… druggie or a guy in a costume… or…" I struggled to think of another example of one of the many false-Underdwellers that I had been summoned to chase up during my time. "… an escaped… loony tune spouting crap about demonic possession and how their head spins 180 degrees whenever they get near a bible. That's a job for the human authorities."

Chikawa prodded the piece of paper in my hand. "According to the fax, that's not the case. The Restriction sector is reporting a break in the Tartarus barrier."

Watari spluttered, liberally spraying the surrounding area with the nip of scotch he'd been in the midst of imbibing. I frowned at him, wiping amber colored spittle from my forehead as he liberally rose out of his seat, an equally shocked and excited expression taking the place of his previously petulant one. "The Tartarus barrier? Tsuzuki, we're talking one mean mother here! No low level demon can tear through the Tartarus barrier so easily!"

Watari's fear and dislike of the roughish Underdwellers was equaled only by his incomparable fascination with them. This concerned me sometimes, I must admit. Scientific individuals have always struck me as being more invested in the study of something, then they are the human element behind it. Even at times when we have been faced with dangerous, abominable creatures, Watari's initial reaction has never been revulsion so much as fascination. Warm though he was, Watari found much to be admired in things that I, straightforward man I am, did not care for.

"It would be A class or higher…" I mused, drumming my fingers on the table, weighing up what options were currently available to us. A level A demon was considerably powerful… and this was perhaps the lesser of the evils I was considering. And with only the two of us at the Ministry's immediate disposal… I gave voice to my concerns, unable to satisfactorily qualm my thoughts. "Chikawa…? Did the Chief seem to think that Watari and I would be enough?"

The young novice scratched his head speculatively. "The Chief is going to try reaching some of the other Shinigami but in the meantime he wants you two over there, conducting damage control." He pointed to himself with the hand currently not occupied behind his head. "I'm to stay here and monitor any incoming info and forward it to you guys if it's relevant."

The table suddenly vibrated beneath my elbows and I glanced over at Watari to see that he had caused it by thumping his fist down childishly against it. "So I actually _do_ have to go. Great." He grumbled mostly to himself. "The boss must think none of us have personal lives. Doesn't he realize I made plans?"

"I don't think he cares." I said, a little put out by Watari's unusually selfish attitude. "Watari, be responsible. Remember, this is our job. It says here there have been a number of casualties already."

Watari slowly smiled, indicating to me that he hadn't intended to sound so self-absorbed. "Oh, it's alright I just wanted to put that out there." He waved his hands at me in exaggerated surrender, serrating my half-hearted tirade directly in two. "I'm going. You know me, wherever there's demons, there I am!"

I appreciated his attempt to feign enthusiasm but got the feeling he might have been getting just a little bit ahead of himself. I let him know by contributing an admonishing shake of my finger. Hey, I was over fifty years older than him, I was allowed. "Okay but just because you're a little more combatative now doesn't mean you should be getting cocky." Watari just pulled down his eyelid and stuck out his tongue at me. Honestly… for a grown man (supposedly) he could behave like such a child when he wanted to.

"Speaking of combatative measures," Chikawa piped up before I could give Watari a liberal tongue thrashing for his behaviour. "I'm supposed to let you guys know that you're both cleared for entry as agents of the Special Investigations Team of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police. **(3)** Conduct yourselves accordingly as such… What else was there…?" He examined the skyline thoughtfully, as though the answer might suddenly appear out of thin air and carbon exhaust fumes. "Oh and in regards to damage control; restrictive use of _mana _if you please. Firearms would be preferable in close combat if that were to occur."

Watari waved his gloved hand about smugly. "Suits me just fine. My powers are primarily non-confrontational anyway." He climbed to his feet, gathering both his and my coffee mug and gesturing for me to follow with a slight jerk of his head. "C'mon partner. Let's go suit up."

We walked with Chikawa to the entrance of the Ministry and then veered off towards a slightly more dilipidated and run down building on the far left hand corner of the annex. This small complex was currently rented out by Watari and had been converted from a storage area into lab space early on in his referel to the Summons Section. It was a bright area, with large windows, gadgets whirring here there and everywhere and usually one or two birds running (or flying) about the place.

Watari's particular power, was the ability to bring inanimate objects such as drawings or machinery to life. His drawing skills were none too good unfortunately but through much trial and error he'd created three pets for himself with this ability; 001, 002 and 003. 001 was a rockhopper penguin with a nappy orange quiff of hair that stuck right up off of the crown of his head. 002 was a Toucan with a brightly colored bill that made almost as much noise as Watari's various machines when she was excited. But the one to whom we are all most endeared, who comes and goes with Watari most everywhere was 003 and it was he that awaited us today as we walked into the lab.

"Ouch!" I exclaimed, as what appeared to be a small, brown, feathery tennis ball collided with the side of my head. I looked around to see what had accosted me and sure enough saw a minute owl, small enough to fit into the palm of my hand, whizzing excitedly about the room like a loose firecracker.

"003, calm down!" Watari chided to little effect. The little owl hooted louder still and continued circling about the room, bouncing cartoonishly off of walls and then rebounding back and forth from the support beams. "Shut up, ya noisy little blighter!" I knew better than to take Watari seriously. He adored 003 and would have been quite lost without him, irritated though he often became with him.

003 was most often spotted either perched on Watari's shoulder or lounging in his hair, taking a nap. I was actually there the day that Watari animated 003 and as such I am something of an Uncle to him now, as reinforced by Watari himself. Having been chastisted, 003 careened obediently over to nip Watari affectionately on the ear, before landing on my shoulder and nuzzling his fuzzy head against my neck. I chuckled, brushing my cheek against his small feathery body to return the sentiment.

"Hey little guy. Sorry but you gotta stay home tonight. Daddy and I have dangerous business."

003 hooted, as if to say he was sorry he couldn't be joining us. I followed Watari deeper into the realms of the lab, chuckling a little as 003 affectionately preened my hair.

Watari waltzed past the coat rack, tossing his long jacket aside and then spinning about in order to spread his arms wide, begging the favor of my attention as always. "Welcome! To Watari's guns, ammo and all things bangin'!" He jerked his thumb towards a hand-written sign on the wall above his head, bearing this exact motif.

"Appropriate naming sense." I muttered to myself, smiling at Watari so he wouldn't clue in to what I had been thinking. "Since this is subterfuge, we should probably go subtle."

He nodded thoughtfully, discounting perhaps any of the louder, more robust long range weapons such as rifles and shotguns. "Pistols. 003, if you please?"

003 hooted in confirmation before vaulting free of my shoulder and flapping across the room to the far wall. He used his beak to tap something like morse code with a large black button. With the final tap, the wall distended itself with the heavy creak of moving machinery and spun in a circle two times, revealing a large impressive pistol display with track lighting. I was stunned because I had no idea just how Watari had been capable of building so many in such a short space of time. I later learned that he'd made a few under the table deals with milletia groups to procure a supply of faulty weaponry, which he then only had to repair, rather than build from the ground up. I swear… Watari always seems to be in the business of getting his thumbs broken. I think he truly believes that a life lived straight is a life not worth living!

"Whoa… you _have _been a busy boy." I murmured, awed by the degree of detail, the meticulous attention he had given each weapon. Tatsumi may say Watari doesn't pay for himself around the Ministry but looking at that magnificent display finally reassured me behind doubt that the departments science division grants were being put to good use. Well… some of the time, anyway. It made me wonder how he actually _had _time for a love-life… Unless of course he just combined work and play and brought his partners back to the lab with him. … I felt suddenly uncomfortable and squirmed on the spot to think of what might have been going on around me in nights long past. Watari, oblivious to my discomfort, appraised his Ministry improved 'artillery' with a proud and yet baleful eye.

"Yep. Had to put my sex-change potion on hold but… you know, I think creating things that kill people rather than enhance them was well worth it."

I smiled knowingly at him. "You still hate guns, don't you?"

He chewed his lip with obvious dislike. "Like a pervasive skin rash. Bust still… I can appreciate their usefulness at a time like this. Rashes on the other hand never really seem to serve much of a purpose." He examined the wall with an experienced eye before reaching out to unwind the bands of one particularly long and lean gun, which looked more like a minature rifle than a pistol, to me. He handed it to me and I took it uncertainly, still not entirely a hundred percent confident in my abilities. I'd had some training since the new hand to hand combat rules had been reinstated one year ago (they'd been compulsory for all field-agents) but I'd never been particular adept at using weapons of _any_ nature.

Watari sighed, straightening my arms so that I held the gun correctly, bunting my elbow with the side of his hand until I'd raised it to the appropriate degree. "Carbon 15 pistol carbine rifle with a magazine feed. It's lightweight and extremely durable to the elements, so it should stand up to most _mana _spells. It uses 9 x 19 mm luger cartridges." He handed over a magazine and an ammunition belt, which I'd be able to conceal beneath my coat. "Perfect for you."

"Thanks." I said, clipping the magazine into the belt, which I then tied securely about my waist. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a light reflection and glanced over to find it was in fact a rather large gun in a mounted glass case on a steel pedastol. "Hey, what's this one?" I asked, going over to get a closer look.

"That one?" Watari repeated, distracted by the task of his own gun selection. "Oh, she's my own design and I'm afraid she's not finished yet." He came over to join me, slapping his hand down on the glass casing proudly. "Tsuzuki, meet the BiB3 81 _mana Cannon_. I like to call her Big Betsy. Big Betsy, meet Asato Tsuzuki. He's the other major explosive device around here." He patted my shoulder teasingly before slipping back over to appraise the artillery wall. My eyes in turn roved all over the strange weapon.

It had two triggers, possibly for shared usage and a thick rectangular barrel, much like a shotgun, only five times larger. It was made of sleek, shiny metal and looked like it was pump action to boot. It was about the same size as my upper torso and if appearances were anything to judge by, probably weighed a veritable tonne. Normal human beings wouldn't be able to carry it. A Shinigami however, has advanced, preternatural strength. With a great enough head of steam, we can throw a car from one side of the road to another. Not that we do that for fun mind… and if we do, we always put the car right back where we found it.

… Hey, can _you _guys account for _every_ dumb thing you've ever done when you're drunk?

"This girl would have come in handy during the Saagatanasu raid." I said, finding myself quite enamored by the idea of what Big Betsy could have done to Saagatanasu after he all but tore out my spine. Not that I was in any fit state to do the firing but it was still a nice thought.

"That's the thinking behind it." Watari concurred from somewhere behind my shoulder. "She won't be any use to us today, unfortunately. The parts are jammed. But she's a little different from a normal gun." I moved around the case to quickly appraise the hand written notes Watari had made, listening to his voice in the background summarize what I was reading. "Betsy is a super accelerated _mana _force cannon. The stronger the spiritual power of the user, the more powerful the ammunition she expells when fired. There's no solid catridge. Betsy fires off compounded blasts of the wielders _mana_, converted through kinetic friction into compressed explosive pressure. Depending on who fires her…" He looked fondly at Betsy over his shoulder, like a proud mother glancing towards the crib of her newborn. "… she could just about blow a hole through a mountain."

"She's a beaut, Watari!" I said with honest enthusiasm.

"Yeah… shame she's defective." He sighed, shoulders slumping. "My powers aren't that strong but the gun should fire for anyone with even an inch of _mana_. But all I get when I pull her trigger is a clicking noise." I had to wonder just how and when Watari was testing this gun and what exactly he was meaning to blow a hole through when he did. "I guess I'm not her type."

"Really?" I said, turning my back on the impressive home made weapon and joining Watari by the artillery wall again. "That's a shame. If she wasn't such a big gal, we could have taken her with us tonight." I glanced back towards Betsy with what I suppose must have been a wistful expression. "You know… if she worked."

Watari gave a barking laugh. "With your powers? I might as well just nuke the goddamn world and be done with it!" Ignoring my offended expression, he unhooked two pistols of the same make and spun them about by the trigger nook, just to show off I suppose. I suppresed the urge to clip him behind the ear for it. "Check these babies out; Beretta Model 93R, a selective-fire machine pistol." He held them steady for a moment so that I could offer them the full courtesy of my appraisal. " It has a selector switch and a foldable foregrip which allows the pistol to fire three round bursts with each pull of the trigger for a cyclic rate of 1100 rounds per minute. The designers limited it to fixed three-round bursts to allow it to be more easily controlled." Adopting a satisfied smile, akin to how a cat might look upon finishing the cream, Watari slid on both the holsters and ammunition belt before holstering the twin Beretta's. I gaped at him, open mouthed.

"How come you get twins and I only get one?" I whined, like the little boy whose brother had recived the better truck at Christmas.

"Because _yours_ is a bigger gun." Watari rationalized, rolling his eyes. I surveyed my own weapon and adopted a cockey air, sashaying my hip to and fro as though to demonstrate just how more 'well-endowed' I was. I felt significantly more masculine on account of it, which I'm sure was Watari's intention.

"Damn straight. And don't you forget it." I said, shouldering him as we both grabbed up our jackets. Watari laughed, setting out some food for his three birds before switching off the main lights and making sure each of his pets were set to rights.

"All right, we're all locked and loaded." He said as we stepped outside, locking the lab door behind us. "Let's swing by the lockers and grab the fake ID's."

"Well, well, look who's mister 'go-get-em' all of a sudden." I said, amused.

"I don't wanna feel like I'm a fucking tote bag anymore, kid." We stepped back into the Ministry proper and entered the locker area of the Summons Department. I had to hunt around for the light switch for a minute before finally stumbling across it and flooding the room with bright, irradascent light. "Back when I was alive, I used to be tough."

"You still _are _tough." I affirmed, referring to the shred of paper inside of my wallet that reminded me of my locker combination. "You're the only one around here who'll stand up to Tatsumi."

"Only when it really matters." Watari insisted, reaching into his locker and retrieving the fake ID of which all Summons Section employees are issued. "But I measure my own standards a little differently." He removed his glasses and stowed them away in a spare case, placing in his emergency contacts instead. Watari had more than one reason for wanting to keep his glasses out of harms way and so contacts were safest when it came to possible combat missions. "Ow… God these things take some getting used to." He closed the locker door, blinking consistently all the while. "In my day, I used to run about the streets of Osaka with no never mind what anyone thought or what might happen to me. I'd go to fisticuffs with anyone who had a go, regardless of how big they were. I'm not that young and stupid anymore I'd like to think but I'd still like to have that gutsiness back in the right context. I'm gonna prove to you all that I _deserve _to be here."

I was upset to hear him talking that way, as though he were expendable. I'd been called useless in my role but I'd also been called the number one Shinigami too. My ego never got too out of control but I never doubted myself entirely either… I had confidence in my abilities, if anything. I trusted my 12 Shikigami and that they would aid me when I needed them. And to hear Watari speak of himself in this fashion… it undermined who he was. "_You_ don't have to prove anything to anyone, Watari. You _do _deserve to be here."

"Hey, don't ruin the moment." Watari smirked, puffing his chest out. "I thought I was kinda cool just then…"

I laughed, the tension broken. I closed the locker behind me and snapped the dial lock back into place. "How will we make our way there?"

"Flying would be too conspicuous… and it's too far to walk…" Watari gripped my inside elbow and led me, with some enthusiasm I might add, towards the Ministry garage. "Let's take one of the work cars."

"All righty then. So long as you're driving."

"Of course I'm driving." He exclaimed, shoving me hard in the arm. "Think I'd let an old fart like _you _take the wheel?"

My driving skills, on account of my family never having actually owned a car whilst I was alive, were pretty much negligable. I'd tried to learn with Tatsumi as my teacher when I became a Shinigami but I almost drove our favorite secretary into the lap of Dr. Squirrel myself, such was my ineptitude.

Watari and I headed for the garage and selected from our limited range Watari's favorite; a 1969 Oldsmobile Cutlass.**(4) **This particular car he had saved from the wrecking yard and restored himself. (With his own money, so technically it _was _his car but he was lending it out, so to speak, for general Ministry use. He was very attached to it). He even spent a moment greeting it before we were permitted to buckle in and be on our way. The inside was black _freakin' leather_. It was so much a swingers car it wasn't even funny. Half the time I was surprised to not find fuzzy dice dangling from the rear view mirror.

Watari eased the Cutlass out of the garage and we made haste to the Tachiagara library.

**~ EC ~**

**(1) Gaijin – **Foreigner.

**(2) Tachiagari – **A fictional library, created entirely for the purpose of DA. I researched a number of libraries situated in the Tokyo area and none I felt were suitable for the particular design I had in mind. The entire name 'Tokyo Metropolitan Tachiagari Library' is in reference to the real Tokyo Metropolitan Central Library, where I originally planned to have the latter part of this chapter set. Instead I decided to construct an original settting for the purpose of adding a very uncommon feature to the Library building, seen towards the end of the investigation. The name Tachiagari is a pun. It is a Japanese word for 'paper'. A paranormal event occurring in the library is a reference back to the film 'Ghostbusters'.

**(3) Special Investigations Team of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police (SIT): **A small number of anti-riot-trained police officers had been trained to handle incidents that can not be dealt with by regular police and riot police officers, but can operate independently or with SAT cooperation. These units include the **Special Investigations Team of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police**, the Osaka Police's Martial Arts Attack Team and the Chiba Police's Attack Response Team. By using their fake ID's, Watari and Tsuzuki are able to bypass the police officers already on scene and assume control of the situation.

**(4) Oldsmobile Cutlass: **Visual description – Yellow car, black roof. Not sure if vehicle was ever sold in Japan but oh well. If anyone could get a hold of one, it would be Watari! As for why it is featured; well, it's sort of a fixture for me. It's my dream car and is also a throwaway reference to 'Parasite Eve 2'. I just love the idea of Tsuzuki and Watari cruising around in one!

Hey! And speaking of; did anyone pick where Watari's outfit was plucked from? Special prize for those that work it out! (Great, now I've got to think of a prize…)

**A/N: **Part three up soon dear readers! Please R and R in the meantime and I hope to be seeing you all soon!


	3. Carnage

_**Dark Adaptation – Dead Men Working.**_

**DISCLAIMER: **Yami no Matseui and its' affiliated characters, concepts and locations belong to Yoko Matsushita and I am earning nothing but the sole satisfaction of telling this story to you fine people.

**A/N: **I'm most relieved to finally present to you a chapter involving actually gore! Oh happy day! As such, I am required to present a few warnings. Some scenes in this chapter may be considered violent and or disturbing. Please keep in mind that if such things easily upset you, you might wish to avoid the latter half of this chapter or skip over it in parts. Use your own judgment here people! With that being said, enjoy.

"_You can be a king or a street sweeper,  
but everybody dances with the Grim Reaper."__**  
~Robert Alton Harris**_

**Carnage**

**Tsuzuki**

"Say Tsuzuki, you seem tired." Watari's voice took on an impish tone, his eyes momentarily straying from the road to appraise me with his classical teasing stare. "Have one too many last night?"

"You know I'm trying to cut back." I stated bluntly, gazing out the window. The Tokyo lights seemed even brighter than I remembered them, as though all my senses were dramatically enhanced. I imagined I could even feel the small nodes in the leather seat covers digging through the seat of my pants and into the skin of my thighs. Something was different tonight… I felt on edge. "No, I'm just having trouble sleeping… I keep having strange dreams."

"Oh, I see." Watari mused seriously, titlting the wheel so as to overtake a slow moving truck in the lane ahead of us. "Well, don't let that sort of thing bother you. Summer brings out the hormones in all of us. _Just don't forget to change your sheets_…" He added offhandedly. I swatted his arm for his efforts.

"No, not _those _kinds of dreams! Take me seriously for a moment, would you? They're about… Muraki coming back." I saw Watari's face become serious so quickly it seemed to almost fall into place, much like a curtain over a stage. "And my… sister. My dead sister calling for help."

"Your sister, huh?" Watari said softly, a frown pressing unfamiliar lines into his forehead. "Kind of weird to mix her in with a degenerate like Muraki."

"Tell me about it." I sighed, pressing my forehead against the window. "But I have been thinking about the both of them a lot lately… it seems like I can't stop doing that long enough to get a decent nights rest."

Watari flashed me a supportive smile. "Well, you shouldn't have any trouble sleeping after we finish up tonight. Can you give me the lowdown?" He said, gesturing to the pocket into which I had tucked the hastily read fax. I retrieved both it and my reading glasses, sliding on the latter so as to be able to read the former.

"Okay," I said, clearing my throat. "At approx 5:35 tonight the police received a distress call from the library clerk. She reported an extremely strange occurrence. An individual in a hooded jacket arrived in the library. Shortly thereafter, the other patrons as well as the desk clerk started to experience vivid and quote, 'terrifying' hallucinations. When the clerk came to, everyone was screaming and those that weren't screaming were already dead, most completely emaciated as if drained of all vital bodily resources." I scrutinzed the details laid down in the fax more thoroughly. "She says that they were 'dead' but reports that they continued to 'breathe' but showed 'no other signs of life'. They didn't react to her attempts to speak with them, nor did they seem to have a pulse. She tried to find others but it was Hellish. 'People were dying left right and center'… she said she barely made it out before the door slammed shut and seemed to seal in upon itself."

Watari absorbed this in a silent, reflective manner. "Sounds… unexplainable to the inexperienced ear."

"Hell, I've been in this job over seventy years and it still sounds weird to me. Since the Tartarus barrier has been breached, it seems only natural to assume that a demon is somehow involved."

"But why the library you suppose?"

I shrugged. "My guess; they're after something in there."

Watari looked at me, a hint of humor still shining in his eyes. "I suppose it's too much to assume they were simply there to check out the latest Harry Potter?"

I smiled back. "You assume correctly." I glanced back down at the fax. "We haven't got much of a description but the clerk seemed to think that it was a young boy."

"Great. Demons _and _children. Always a good combination." Watari said, rolling his eyes. "Mission objectives?"

I skipped to the last paragraph of the fax. "Retrieve any lost souls and detain suspects. We've been given authority to liquadate the felon if we find ourselves unable to contain him."

"_Liquadate_… gotta love that pencil pushing, up-tight, head office lingo."

I sweat-dropped. "Actually… that was my own wording."

Watari shrugged carelessly. "Eh, well you're a dork anyway. Nothing further, your honor." He grinned as I drove my knuckle into his side. "Would you give it a rest already?"

"If you _actually _sounded apologetic, I might not feel the need!"

"Oh, you're a big complex ball of angst, ain't ya? Anyway, we're here."

I looked out the front windscreen to encounter a huge crowd of people blocking the carpark surrounding the Tokyo Metropolitan Tachiagara Library. Watari had to carefully maneavuer about them, progressing until the localized police blockade forced us to park. We weren't able to negotiate our way into an allocated space and were forced to simply halt the car in the middle of the milling civillians.

"Quite a crowd." Watari remarked, gathering his things together. I put away my glasses, folded up the fax and placed it back into my inside pocket. We both tossed our heavy wear coats into the backseat, knowing they'd just be in the way once we'd entered the library, adopting instead light-wear jackets. "Hope none of these lolly-gaggers scratches my car or murder won't _only_ be done _inside _the library, I'll tell you that much!"

"The police haven't been able to enter." I said, ignoring his tirade in favor of distributing all the facts. "The localized entrances have been sealed… as though they have been wielded shut, apparently."

"Well, we'll just see about that shall we?" Watari said with the air of a man with supreme self-confidence, as we both climbed out of the car. "I must say; I feel rather professional, don't you?" He gave me a silly grin, hitting the button on his keychain to instigate the automatic locking system. I smiled back at him, shaking my head in mirth.

"You say the weirdest things sometimes, Watari." I was forced to slide up tight against the door of the car as two paramedics rushed by me, carrying a woman between them towards a waiting ambulance. The victim was trembling, as though completely traumatized, her eyes glaring wide and unseeing towards the sky, fingers clenched into a claw shape and held up in front of her chest as though attempting to ward something terrifying away. She was liberally coated in blood and I could see her lips trembling, her breaths rushed and frantic and incoherent mumblings trickling out of her, clear to me even with all the background noise. Police sirens blaring, ambulance sirens, people yelling, screaming, jostling for a closer look at the scene of the massacre… Only then did it really strike me, the manner of job that Watari and I were performing. This was _not _ordinarily Shinigami work. We were more the underhanded, quiet, detective side of the Ministry… very rarely were we called in to a scene of a huge disaster like this! Our job normally came later, after the Kiseki had been correlated, so as to ascertain whether all deceased souls were accounted for. And if not… well, then there's a problem! Send in the Shinigami! But since Watari and I were the only one's who had been hanging about so late, there really wasn't much choice. Head Office could hardly allow a possible demonic perpetrator to escape, based on the grounds that Shinigami didn't usually perform this sort of field work.

"Dear God… that poor woman." The coppery scent of blood hung thick in the air and I forcefully reigned in the errant desires dictated by my unusual cells, which reacted so inappropriately to that smell. "So much blood…" I found myself musing with great introspection.

Watari gazed over at the woman as she was carried past. "That's Kohaku Tomodashi, the clerk." We both watched as she was carefully loaded into the back of the ambulance. "What do you suppose happened in there?"

I shrugged, swallowing back a thick knot that had formed in the nadir of my throat. The scent and sight of blood always had that effect on me. "Guess we'll find out. Is it okay to park here?"

"Hey, we're the SIT, baby." Watari declared brashly. "We can park wherever the Hell we damn please. And it's not like we have a choice. This way rookie." He walked towards the police line, slapping his thigh in a condescending manner as though ushering along a dog. I jogged after him, grabbing a handful of his long hair and giving it a vindictive tug to emphasize my feelings.

"If anyone's the rookie around here it's _you_, jailbait." I snarled, releasing his hair before we both came off as looking entirely unprofessional and lacking all possible credibility we might have hoped to exorcise.

"Don't even start in on me, _Chastity-boy_." Watari sneered, rubbing the crown of his head. I elbowed him for that little comment, unable to reign myself in and we ended up shouldering one another all the way over to the officer holding fort at the police line. Watari stopped jostling me long enough to whisper instructions into my ear.

"This fellow is a liaison of the Ministry, so he should know who we really are. But flash the bling anyhow, for the sake of everyone else." We both held out our fake ID as we approached. "How do you do? I'm Agent Chinatsu from the Special Investigations Team, Tokyo Metropolitan. This is Agent Hotaru, same division. **(1)** Please be patient with him, as he is a boy of very little talent."

Back in my day, parents when speaking about their child to another (usually a teacher) often employed this particular phrase. It may have sounded quite disparaging but it was really a means of conveying humility. Watari was _not _however my parent nor my supervisor. He was simply trying to goad me. And doing a rather fine job of it, I must confess. I flashed him the dirtiest look I could possibly muster but it was lost on account of him not paying me the slightest bit of attention. I suppose he thought that if he were to look at me, neither of us would be able to keep a straight face.

"You contacted our department 15 minutes ago?" Watari continued, his voice not betraying a hint of anything other than straightforward, hands down professionalism. I'm sure his sides were busting for trying not to laugh however.

The Police Officer was an interesting looking man. He was taller than both Watari and I, probably six foot two and of a considerably more slender frame, which seemed odd, given his profession. His eyes were, for the most part, hidden beneath his hat and what I could see of his hair was that it was deep black, even darker than my own. And when he spoke, it was with some unfamiliar, exotic accent. His Japanese wasn't perfect, so I assumed that he was possibly foreign.

"You boys mustn't have much of an after-hours life." I saw just the hint of a smile form from beneath the overhanging shadow of his hat. I found I didn't care much for that sort of unsolicited pun, even if it was unintentional.

"We were in a position to respond, officer so I would hope that you would appreciate that, rather than make your little jokes at our expense." I stated firmly, trying to maintain an entirely professional demeanor.

The Officer's smile didn't waver but he did dip his head in a reverential gesture, which I suppose constituted an apology. "You must excuse me. That _was_ what you might call inappropriate. Thankyou for responding so quickly."

"May we step on through?" Watari asked, using formal Japanese for some reason. I suppose he was attempting to sound extra professional or something.

The officer nodding, pushing down the police tape with his foot so that we could walk on through without disruption. "You're cleared for entry. Come on in."

"What's the update on the situation?" I asked as we stepped over the black and white marker tape and into the restricted area proper. From there I could gain an unobstructed view of Tachiagari library. Three stories overall, with an extensive basement and garden area to boot. The windows were lit up, so electricity on the inside was still running which would help things along considerably. I wasn't sure if I was imagining it or not but I thought that I could see dark marks obscuring the windows of each story. Blood perhaps… or something else entirely?

The officer followed my gaze, tilting the tip of his cap down a little to the effect that even more of his face was obscured. "It's a little difficult to say with any real certainty. We removed the desk clerk only moments ago, having treated her for minor blood loss. She since appears to have gone into delayed shock and the paramedics were concerned for the state of her heart. She wasn't able to give us any further information outside of what we have already forwarded to your office in the initial order." He gestured with a flick of his head towards the front entryway, where a number of uniformed police officers were milling. "The Sergeant has some members of the explosives squad working on the door but so far they haven't made so much as a dent in it."

Watari caressed his chin, eyes surveying the upper window that I myself had just been inspecting. "I see… well that certainly is troubling."

The officer crossed his arms; glancing back and forth between us I would presume. I can't imagine for the life of me in which direction his eyes might otherwise have been pointing. "Do you suppose you and your chum would have any luck?"

"We'll certainly make a good go of it." I said, offering a curt bow. "Would you excuse us then, Officer? My partner and I would like to take a closer look."

He immediately stepped aside, swaying his arm across his body to indicate that I was more than welcome to it. "Of course. Please."

I bowed a second time, just to be respectful and then stepped past, my eyes trained on the building the entire while. Was that someone gazing down from the upstairs window? Or was it a reflection of the siren lights from the police cars and ambulance? A shiver ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the slight shift in temperature outside.

Watari went to follow me and then, seeming to be reminded of something, returned to speak with the policeman.

"Officer, in the event that we are able to enter the building, it is imperative that we be permitted to regulate the situation ourselves." He explained, stowing his hands deep in his jacket pockets and rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. "If we happen to encounter difficulties beyond our means, we shall make a duress call. Under no other circumstances should any member of your department be allowed to enter. For their own sakes. Do you understand?"

The officer nodded, slow and deep. "But of course. If the situation should transpire, I would personally respond." He raised his hand in a formal, stiff gesture. "Best of luck."

"Thankyou." Watari bowed to him before returning to my side. Together we approached the library, weaving in and out of the police vehicles and the assorted officers standing about, trying to control the panicking crowd.

"Sheesh, friendly guy, huh?" I whispered to Watari, gesturing back towards the affiliated officer with my head.

Watari smiled indulgently and tossed a strand of hair out of his line of sight with a flick of his head. "Never mind him now. We have to concentrate on how we're going to get in here."

I pursed my lips, gazing up at the building as we made our approach. The upper windows were inaccessible due to the amount of people in plain sight from the street. "If we approach from the back, we could probably fly up and enter through a window out of sight from the crowd." I suggested, gesturing towards the front entrance. "If we blow open the front door for them, the police might head inside regardless of our instructions. We might inadvertently increase collateral. Not to mention we'll lose all control over the scene."

"Tsuzuki, we're cleared for entry." Watari reminded me, acknowledging a female police officer with a nod of his head. "I'm sure that Officer has some authority here, otherwise he wouldn't very well be our liaison now, would he? I think we should trust him to keep the rest of these goofs on a short leash."

We climbed the five or so steps leading into the libraries wide entranceway. A group of heavily suited police officers were huddled about the double doors, three of which were valiantly attempting to cut their way inside with the use of a large, noisy buzz saw.

"Good evening, gentleman." Watari called in a friendly manner, waving lightly as we joined them. Two of the officers standing at the rear turned in response to his greeting and then glanced at one another with a knowing smirk.

"Well, well, well… if it isn't Barbie and Ken." Said the tallest of the pair, eliciting a chuckle from his companion. Watari's smile slid downwards like melting ice cream and formed into a frown, as did my own I'm sure. "Sorry ladies but the beach party has been moved to another location."

"Oh, you're funny." Watari said, setting his hands on his hips and breathing in so deeply his chest expanded to an almost disproportional degree. "A fine time this is to start making dumb cracks like that. Ya wanna step aside?"

"Aww, what's the matter, Barbie?" The shorter agent simpered, leaning over to flip Watari's hair provocatively. "You the new PMS model or something?"

Watari chuckled dryly and before I could so much as blink he had sunk his hand into the officers groin area and viciously twisted. The officer shrieked, his legs buckling. He would have gone down onto his knees if Watari hadn't kept him suspended by his grasp.

"You ever want children smart guy, I suggest you start showing some respect." Watari said angrily, squeezing a tighter still. A police officer with broad features and a carefully groomed moustache appeared from the front of the gathering, significantly more ornate than the others and directed his hard, hawk like gaze towards the line of Watari's arm.

"Ryoto-san, I do hope I'm not finding you're making trouble for yourself again." He said in a most docile voice to the man Watari was in the midst of permanently disabling. "I take it that you fellows are the SIT agents?"

Watari released his hold on 'Ryoto's' more sensitive area (Ryoto immediately made use of his newfound freedom in scuttling as far from Watari as he could) in favor of offering the exact same hand to the new arrival.

"That's us. Nice ta meet ya…?"

"Tatsuo. I'm the Sergeant in charge of this division." The policeman said, wrinkling his nose a little in response to Watari's proffered hand and quite deliberately refusing to take it. He offered me a curt bow. "Thankyou for coming on such short notice."

"That's all right." I replied, offering him a deeper bow in return. "If you wouldn't mind, could we please examine the door?"

"Knock yourselves out." The Sergeant said, gesturing for the rest of his team to clear a path, which they proceeded to do with rather amusing alacrity. Most had seen what Watari had done to Officer Ryoto and didn't seem particularly eager to further bar our efforts. "Don't know how much luck you'll have. I ain't never seen anything like it."

Watari and I knelt down about a foot from the double doors in order to examine them. The exposed skin of my chest and face immediately prickled in gooseflesh as an icy coldness stole over me, seeming to emanate directly from the wood itself. Watari too must have experienced the same disconcerting sensation as I because he drew his thin jacket considerably tighter about his upper torso, concealing the exposed skin peeping through the gaps of his top.

The doorway itself appeared to have been deliberately welded shut with the use of a black viscous substance, which had coated the hinges and lines of both wooden doors. In some places it had actually solidified into a compact crystallized mass, whilst other areas freely leaked as though the dark cedar were bleeding blackened blood.

"If you place your fingers against the door," The Sergeant continued from somewhere behind us. "It feels as though the wood is being suctioned inward at a phenomenal rate."

Reluctant though I was, we did as he had instructed and I was most astonished to feel a phenomenal force seeming to radically draw the wooden surface away from beneath my fingers. It appeared as though something were pushing at it but of course no one was providing such pressure on our side. It could have only come from within. I bowed my head, on the pretense of examining the substance congealing at the base of the doorway and whispered so that only Watari could hear me.

"It's a soul seal. Don't you agree, _Agent Chinatsu?_"

Watari smirked grimly as he touched his fingers to the door. Some of the goo came away on his fingers. I thought that this was rather ill advised myself but Watari had always played by his own rules. "I think you're right. The demon, whomever it is, has bound some poor erstwhile spirit to the doorway. Their wandering only pulls the bonds tighter, like two loops of a shoelace, pulling the halves of a shoe together."

I stood up, brushing the knees of my trousers off. "The spirit must be wandering close by. If we can find it and liberate it –"

" - we should be able to open the doors." Watari concluded, examining his fingers curiously. "I couldn't say for sure what exactly this substance is…"

My initial assumption was that it was perhaps spiritual residue or protoplasm. But then this did not fit the profile precisely because protoplasm was usually either clear or milky white in color, rather than black. But if I was ignorant as to its' origins, then it seemed only natural to me that Watari might have had a clue as to what it was. He was rather knowledgeable when it came to the Occult. "You don't recognize it?" I asked, failing to keep the air of impatience out of my voice.

He shook his head, seeming to take his ignorance on the matter as a personal insult. "It's completely unfamiliar. Cold as ice though." From out of his pocket he revealed a small petri dish, which he then used to take a sample of the subject. Once this had been safely tucked away, he wiped his fingers off on his pant leg and also stood up, turning to address the explosives team. They regarded him as I suppose they might have otherwise a very large and unstable bomb and obstructed the direct line to their loins as best they could. "Would you excuse us, gentleman? We have some delicate equipment that should be able to handle this job."

"I see…" Sergeant Tatsuo mused as we strolled past him and back down the stairs. "Shall we keep trying in the meantime?"

"Sure." I said as we turned to the left and started to make our way around the side of the building. "Just don't blow a blood vessel."

Of course we didn't have any 'delicate equipment' to speak of. But then, how do you explain to the local law enforcement that you're just stepping out to search for a specter? I tugged Watari by the elbow, guiding him around the corner down the left hand lane that ran alongside the Tachiagari. There were no outside lights on the wall of the building, so we each turned on the small portable torches kept in our holsters. Their beams danced eerily off of the brickwork as we made our way towards the garden at the rear of the building.

"One of the perks of being a Shinigami; you get to act totally superior to the local law enforcement agents." Said Watari, with a satisfied chuckle. I tutted softly as I glanced at him with a disapproving expression. Though I'm sure he failed to appreciate it in the dark.

"Watari, be nice." My eyes strayed towards the library wall as we strolled past. A niggling thought was tugging at the corner of my mind and would not be denied, though I felt it would have been stupid to mention. "You don't suppose the spirit could be inside, do you?"

Watari sighed in such an exaggerated fashion it seemed as though he were praying for patience. "Spiritual seals don't work that way. The spirit has to be located outside of the barricade area in order to create the metaphysical pull, otherwise there's no point. You know that, ya duffer."

I felt truly irritated with myself for not remembering such a basic piece of information. Though I did feel that Watari might have been a little more tactful in pointing it out. "Sorry, I forgot. It's such an old fashioned barricade method I'm afraid I'm not quite familiar with it."

"It would behoove you to study other areas every once in a while, Tsuzuki-san." Watari said, in a scarily uncanny imitation of Tatsumi. We laughed quietly, having both been the recipients of that particular lecture more than once during our time as Guardians.

"Yeah, yeah, all right." I muttered, as we emerged out into the library garden. It was a small-enclosed area with a number of stone and wooden benches set about the perimeter. There was a tall oak in the center of the grounds and a number of overhanging _Sakura _trees and weeping willows. Flowering shrubs framed the surrounding area and the grass was neatly trimmed, almost anally so and as lush and green as you could ever imagine.

"Nice place…" I said, shining my torch about in order to inspect everything. "It would be peaceful on a warm summers day."

Watari chuckled in a way I didn't quite like. It sounded suspiciously sneaky. "Yeah, I remember it well." We both set to work, panning about the area with our torches, checking for any hint of spiritual activity. "I came here after a particularly indulgent New Years party."

I curled my lip upwards to express exactly what I thought of this comment and swung my torch about from every horizontal surface I could land the beam upon. "… Which bench was it?" I asked with deliberate foreboding.

Watari laughed in a doleful manner from somewhere behind the oak tree. I could see the beam of his torch arching through the upper most branches. I'm not quite sure what he thought the spectral phantom might have been doing up in the tree exactly but I suppose it never hurt to be thorough.

"Oh Tsuzuki, you think I would have knowingly defiled a bench upon which the studious sit during the day and dutifully invest themselves within the time honored admirable pursuit of knowledge? How thoughtless do you suppose I am?"

"I'm sure I wouldn't know." I said carefully, refusing to bite.

"Well not _that _thoughtless." His torch beam arched around the oak tree and landed on me as I bent over to lift the branch of an overhanging bush in order to shine my torch light beneath it. "It was beneath that rhododendron."

I froze. Down to the very last molecule in my body. "… You mean… the rhododendron I'm _touching_ right at this very moment?"

I caught a hint of Watari's straight white teeth arching into a mischievous smile in the refracting glow of his torch. "The very same."

I released the bush quickly and backed away, wiping my hand feverishly against my pant leg as though contaminated by something rancid.

"Jesus Christ… remind me to scrub off my epidermis after I get home."

Watari huffed as he sashayed past me, making a perfunctory swipe at my head as he went. "I was only joking. Don't be so mean."

I ducked under his hand and strode towards the left hand side of the garden, aiming my torch towards the upper dividing wall. "Should have known. Otherwise that poor plant wouldn't still be standing."

"Meow, meow, kitty."

"You haven't had many one night stands have you? I mean, seriously."

He was oddly silent for a minute or so, apparently thinking back with great difficulty. "I think I did once… some years ago now. It was that receptionist fellow from the Suppression department…"

"You _think_?!" I exclaimed with great distaste, swinging the torch beam about to shine into his eyes. He blinked back virginishly. "What, don't you look at faces anymore?"

He shrugged disconnectedly, as though the matter were not of great importance! "Of course I look at faces _now. _I said it happened once years ago. It was my death day. It was dark, I was drunk, I was lonely and I apparently was not the only one who felt that way. You know, these things happen!"

"Apparently not only in the soapies." I grumbled, returning to my inspection with that familiar feeling of pressure rising up to accommodate space within my chest. I had never been comfortable with people who adopted this kind of cavalier attitude towards relationships. I had only been in one or two long-term partnerships and never, had I once entered into them casually. It was a mark of respect to both your partner and yourself, to take the time you spent together seriously.

Watari seemed to take my surly silence as a sign that we had stumbled into that area we oh so often disagreed upon because he hastened to rectify himself. "But I don't do that sort of thing anymore." He quickly assured. "I was really messed up back then. I'm a good boy now."

I laughed. I couldn't help it. "Since _when_?"

"Since paper shufflin' Sam the receptionist man or whatever his name was."

I shone my torch beam down the right hand lane running besides the library, finding it disconcertingly empty. "Watari… I do care about you but you have got to be one of the free-ist guys around when you've got it in your head to behave that way."

Watari's beam joined mine. Apparently he'd finished checking his half of the compound. "I prefer the term 'emotionally-liberated-,' thankyou. And say _used to_ would you? I've only had like one serious partner in the last eight years. Been busy living my own death, _thankyou very much._"

'Emotionally liberated' sounded like the kind of excuse Muraki might use as a means to explain his behaviour. I turned about and gave Watari a gentle swat upon the cheek. "One day you'll find someone you really want to invest yourself in and you'll want it to be special and _then_ you'll be embarrassed about how carefree you were."

Watari made a retching noise as though the idea of being committed to someone was utterly repulsive. "Oh _gawd_, I couldn't think of anything worse."

"What's the big whoop?" I asked, steering him about so that we could head out towards the center of the garden. "You were married when you were alive, right?" He had worn a wedding band his first few years within the Summons Department but had removed it after becoming involved with someone and 'moving on' so to speak. But the skin about his ring finger always maintained that residual tan line, showing where the band once sat, so I gathered he might have even worn it at times when I was not about to see.

Rather than lapse into a composed silence, Watari instead gave a brassy laugh, poking me in the back with the end of the torch. "And once was more than enough, thankyou. I'm not what you would call the 'committed' type. I like my own space."

"Not that you would know it." I muttered, shining my beam up into the oak tree for one last inspection before turning back to face Watari. He took revenge for my smart comment by flashing his torch beam into my eyes, temporarily blinding me.

"All right, that'll be quite enough of tha-" Through the white dots dancing in my field of vision, I saw Watari's eyes widen. I felt my heart palpitate as his voice commanded me as though coming from far away, "Move Tsuzuki!"

I dove quickly to the side as something came lunging down through the branches of the oak tree and irregularly long iridescent fingers made two errant swipes at my face and chest. From the corner of my vision I saw tendrils of hair lash around the gleaming specter, its' features poised in perpetual grimace as a pained shriek sounded through the night, terminating into an almost girlish moan. The long dead apparition rotated in mid air, torn clothing trailing through the air as though drawn by a watery undertow. It faced us, mouth awning wide to show never terminating blackness at the depths of her throat. Ice cold shivers raced up my spine, sending trembles down to the very tips of my fingers and toes.

"AGH!" I screamed inarticulately. "A ghost! It's a ghost, a ghost!" I dove behind Watari and grasped his arms between my hands, using him as an in-human meat shield. Hades finest, people.

"That's what we were looking for remember?" He said patiently, as though explaining the simplest of facts to an irrational child. My canine form rose to the surface and I huddled deeper against the curve of Watari's back, furry ears flattened against the sides of my head and tail slinking down between my legs.

"It doesn't make it any less scary!" I sobbed, only daring to examine the specter over Watari's shoulder.

It wasn't the prettiest phantom I had ever seen. A female spirit, or _yurei, _identified as such by its' long black hair and pale garments. The upper half of it's face appeared to have dissolved into the air above it, only a mouth and chin visible, with lips drawn back to reveal impeccably white teeth, clenched together like two strings of pearls. The arms looked as though they had been ripped out of joint and then torn off at the elbow, allowing the lower arms to float beside them in midair. The lower half of the torso had been ripped entirely away, leaving the waistline hanging in bloodied tatters.

The _yurei _hovered before us, clawing distractedly at what existed of its' face and speaking as though its' voice filtered from down the line of a long, vacant tunnel. "_Where… is the… other half… of me?_"

I swallowed back a thick lump that had been forming at the base of my throat. "Jesus, what's wrong with her? Why does she look like that?"

"Soul division." Watari explained. He looked calm but I could feel him straining against me as he attempted to step backwards and put some distance between himself and the tortured specter. "When a spirit is used as a seal, their soul is split in two. One half is bonded directly into the object to which the seal is required, whilst the other half is torn away and rejected to wander. They remain connected by the minimalist thread so that the metaphysical pull is sustained but the spirit cannot go to its' rest whilst its' soul is divided."

"…_What's… happening…?" _The yurei moaned. She jerked back, disconnected arms flailing. "_I need… the other half… of me…_"

I swallowed again, deciding to make use of myself. Though not to the effect that I would move any closer, of course. "Um…" I cleared my throat. "M-Miss? Please… don't be afraid. We're here to help you."

"_Help me…?" _The yurei suddenly curled upward like a snake rising from a wicker basket to the serenading call of the charmers' flute, before cracking downwards so that her face was now only a hairs breadth from my own. Watari gave up all pretences of trying to be brave and fell sideways with an audible squeak. I too, might have done the same thing had I not been veritably frozen in fear. "_Who are… you?_"

"We are Shinigami, madam." Watari said, climbing back onto his feet. His face looked even more pale than usual and there was a definite waver to his voice. "From the Hades realm."

The yurei glanced back and forth between us. Well… I supposed that she did. As I might have previously mentioned, she did not in fact possess any discernible eyes. "_Shini… gami?_"

"Guardians of Death." I established, as better means to accommodate her level of understanding. "We came here to investigate the disturbance within the library."

The yurei raised her disjointed arms and gingerly felt about in the void for the absent half of her face. "_I am… dead._" She eventually established.

I felt a pang of sympathy stir in my heart. To think that this poor girls life was over just like that… there was still so much she could have done… And the people that would miss her and grieve for her. Sometimes it was too much to bear, this job. "Miss… I'm so dreadfully sorry. And I wish that there was more time to explain to you what needs to be explained but as it is, we're in something of a pinch. You see; your soul has been used to seal off the library. There may still be people inside who are trapped and require assistance. We need you to come with us if you please and –"

The yurei interrupted my speech by spearing its' fingers straight down towards my chest. Fortunately, Watari's reflexes were not quite so compromised as my own at that moment and he reacted quickly by kicking my legs out from underneath me just in time to avoid the attack. The yurei hissed aggressively as she steered herself into reverse and flung her disjointed body up into the branches of the overhanging tree once more.

"_I will not go… to the land of the dead. I will not... I am free... Dead men walking… will not take me to the land of the dead!_"

Watari grabbed my hand and pulled me into a sitting position. "Stall her." He hissed, eyes blazing.

I leapt back onto my feet and whipped a rectangular piece of paper from my pocket, using my finger to hastily ascribe spell scripture to the parchment surface. Holding the fuda between my index and middle finger, I nodded to Watari and we dispersed in separate directions, preparing to bear down upon the yurei in a pinch attack. I felt the ground turf up behind me as I ran and saw that the specter was distributing molecular energy through the earth. I steadied myself just as soon as I felt the spell energy dissipate, holding both the fuda and my spare hand out in order to cast the spell.

"By order of Hades, this summons shall break the evil spell that has been placed upon thee and shall banish the omen!" I concentrated upon the _mana _within my body, spelling out the complex spell signature and seeing the residue appear before me in the form of kanji. "_The brilliant sun comes from the East – Malevolence Obliteration!_"

A golden stream of arrows composed of positive _mana_ expanded from the aura of my own body and stole forward into the intangible form of the yurei. She reeled backwards as though born on a gust of wind, howling as my own energy started to take effect against her.

From the other end of the yard, Watari readied himself to cast the containment spell. It was quite complex, involving a good half-minute concentrative chanting and he was only now winding up. I dodged another of the yurei's attacks, severely weakened from use of the Malevolence Obliteration hex though considerable enough to turf up the roots of the camellia plant behind me and send the flowering bush hurtling through the air. Pale pink petals floated down around my feet as I stationed my weight, throwing up a protective shield between myself and the yurei's next attack, which was, as a result, refracted into the surrounding wall, leaving a long, thick burn mark.

"Anytime you're ready Watari." I called, cart wheeling sideways as the yurei swooped towards me in the style of a swinging scythe, shrieking like a tea kettle as her long fingered hands raked the place where my neck had been precisely five seconds earlier. I landed bodily beside Watari, who turned to bring the yurei into his field of vision, clasping his hands, pinky fingers and index fingers pressed together and raised apart from the rest.

"_In accordance to the resistance of all souls of the spectral world,_" He called in a loud voice, having concluded the initial segments of the containment enchantment._ "By thine authority we shall exact that which curbs the erstwhile actions of the spirits._" Watari's aura beamed brightly as his mana extended to occupy more space than the restrictions of his physical form. I stepped behind him, so that he would have a clear line of fire towards the yurei. As I previously mentioned, Watari has a bad habit of becoming flustered and as a result, missing his target completely."_Soul Truss!_"

Two transparent metaphysical hands appeared on either side of the yurei and clasped together, holding her erstwhile. The strain of maintaining the spell was causing sweat to bead across Watari's forehead but he held tight to the screaming, struggling yurei, drawing his fingers down and then bringing his palms in tight together. "_Suppression!_"

The metaphysical hands squeezed together, losing detail and with one final scream from the yurei, she become a glowing spherical orb, which shrank down until it could then fit into the palm of Watari's hand.

"And that's all she wrote." He said breathlessly, placing one hand upon his hip and hefting the soul into the air as though it were a trophy. I tried to breathe a very subtle sigh of relief, not wanting to make it too obvious.

"Hey Watari, nice job" I patted his shoulder, eyeing the ebbing light of the contained soul with a careful eye. "I didn't think you'd actually be able to do it!"

Watari's smile became rather fixed and frozen. "The lack of confidence you seem to have in me never surprises."

I checked my body over for any injuries I might have sustained during my brief scruffle and was cheered to find that I hadn't received so much as a scrape. My legs ached a little from the exertion I had put them under, so I raised each of them one at a time and rubbed the calf muscle. "That was pretty touch and go for a moment there. Thanks."

Watari offered me a sincere smile over his shoulder, his chin trembling a little. He still wasn't as accustomed to this as I was. "No sweat. There ain't never much point in reasoning with a _yurei_." He gazed at the soul with a regretful expression. "The more traumatic and violent the death of the body, the more unreasonable and volatile the spirit."

"Judging from what we've just seen, I can only imagine what terrible thing might have occurred inside." I glanced up at the library window, biting my lip thoughtfully. "How many people have died, I wonder?"

Watari sighed, tossing the soul up and down in his hand casually. I winced, preparing to dive to the ground if it should slip free of his fingers. "Well, now we have this part of the soul, we have a key to the building. We should be able to get inside now." To my great relief, he tossed the soul to me and I slipped it into my jacket pocket, out of the way of harm. "Here. You carry it. I can't stand the feel of the thing."

We both returned to the front of the building, subject to the questioning stares of the milling officers, who seemed to have nary a clue as to why we would have needed to adjourn to the backyard in the first place. Ignoring them, we moved to the front entranceway, where it seemed they'd had no success during our absence.

"We're back!" I called, chuckling as several of the officers immediately cleared a path for us. Watari beamed around at them, innocent as you please. "How goes progress?"

Sergeant Tatsuo tilted back the hinging cover of his protective mask as he moved away from the sparking spray of the cutting iron. "The pressure seems to have alleviated some but the damn door still refuses to give." He sighed with palpable aggravation, shooting the door a very disconcerted look. "It's no ones favorite option but at this late point we're considering plastic explosives to blow out the hinges."

"If you must." Watari said pleasantly, his eyes twinkling with good humor. "But before you make that call, mind if we take one last look?"

I saw a number of the officers roll their eyes to the side, seeming to find us nothing short of a nuisance. Tatsuo even looked as if he was hesitant about granting us any further liberties. "If you want." He finally said, with an air of reluctance I couldn't pretend to miss. "Can't see you getting any further than us, though."

We bowed briefly, squeezing between the officers and waiting for them to remove the cluttering cutting equipment.

"Just press the soul into the door and it should reattach itself to its' other half." Watari whispered in my ear as I knelt down.

"Yes, I know that much, thankyou." I said tartly, removing the soul from my pocket and under cover of my body, pressed the glowing orb into the keyhole area, where it dissolved with a soft hiss of blue steam.

Watari put on a bit of a show for the benefit of the watching officers. "Now… let's see here…" He caressed his chin thoughtfully. "If we tap _here_…" He tapped a random spot on the door. "And then _here, here _and…_here._" He continued tapping some more random points. "Yep! That should do it! Agent Hotaru, if you please?"

I made a big show of pulling up my sleeves, flexing my arms and cracking my neck before opening the door both easily and casually, the crystallized substance cracking loudly as the hinges broke through the places in which it had set. The officers all exclaimed comically as one, their jaws falling slack.

"Great work partner!" Watari enthused, trying without much success to hide an amused smile behind the line of his arm. He finally managed to compose himself and spun about to face the still speculative expressions of the surrounding officers, striking one of his trademark poses with one finger in the air. He very much resembled a vivacious cartoon character. "Officers, Agent Hotaru and I will now enter the building and conduct ourinitial investigation. The handsome officer by the police line will happily inform you that we are to be left in peace whilst doing so. If we require assistance, we shall call for it. Until such time as we emerge, no one is to enter the building under any circumstances. Understood?" He said, wagging his finger to and fro in the officers' faces. Still perplexed over our apparently simple infiltration, all they seemed able to do was nod in a blank, obedient manner. Watari smiled, apparently satisfied.

"Chinatsu?" I called, holding up the Carbon rifle pistol in a defensive position. He nodded in adherence.

"Let's go." He said in a mock macho voice, un-holstering the Beretta's and moving to stand beside me. We exchanged a glance briefly, trying to bolster one another's nerves and with a deep breath, I led the way into the building, sliding the door shut behind us and drawing the deadbolt just in case the officers outside got it into their heads to disobey us. As soon as the door had clicked into place, Watari and I looked at one another and burst into barely suppressed laughter.

"Man, did you see the looks on their faces?" I said, once I was able to speak. "They couldn't get their heads around it!"

"Poor buggers." Watari chuckled, gently dabbing the tears at the corners of his eyes in order to prevent the contacts from slipping. "Maybe we shouldn't tease them so much."

I shrugged. "With so few perks in this job, what more can we do," I adopted a teasing tone to my voice as I balanced my free elbow on Watari's shoulder and bent my mouth close to his ear. "Agent Chinatsu?"

"All right, all right." Watari said, flicking at my shoulder in order to get me to straighten up. We both glanced around. "Power's still on. Suppose we should be grateful for that."

The library entrance ran for a distance of approximately twenty-five feet and was dimly lit by old-fashioned lanterns that lent to it a sort of medieval air. The left hand side of the hall was lined with a glass casing, housing a number of ancient looking books, artifacts from various stages of Japanese history, paintings and sculptures. The upper half of the left wall was floor to ceiling glass windows, showing the building next door and the road leading way from the Tachiagari. The carpet was woven navy blue material that felt vaguely spongy beneath my feet. It was eerily quiet. Not a sound filtered down from the central library area other than the quiet purring of the air conditioning system. One of the blades must have been out of place because it clicked occasionally.

"Look at all these old knickknacks." I said, indicating the assortment of intellectual paraphernalia on the left hand wall. "All of this sort of stuff makes my head hurt."

Watari struck a campy pose, one hip jutting at an extreme angle. "And that would be why you are the _brawn_ of this operation, my friend." He indicated a point on the glass casing some five feet or so from the entrance. I had missed it on my first initial inspection but now I could see there was a line of bloody fingerprints leading down from the sliding entrance doors of the library center. Patches of the floor were also marked, from where she had stumbled onto her hands and knees. "Look here." He tapped at the glass above the first smudged handprint, still quite wet from what I could tell. "I think there's a fairly good chance this was from when our friend Kohaku made her exit."

I surveyed the line of bloodied smears, curling my lip with distaste as I followed them along to the far end of the hall. "This whole atmosphere… it's so creepy." I took a moment to load up the cartridge of the rifle. "Well, let's get started. We have to look for any souls that haven't crossed over. And then, we'll try and nail the son of a bitch that did all this."

Watari winked as he slid the loaded cartridges into the handles of each of the Beretta 93R's respectively. "It might be worth looking through the security room, see if there isn't some recording of what happened inside of here." He gestured to a security camera in the upper corner of the entrance hall with one of the Beretta's. Looking closer, I saw that the red light beside the camera lens was still flashing.

"Good thinking." I hefted up the rifle in my left hand, balancing the barrel grip with my right. "Let's get cracking."

We both held our weapons at the ready as we made our way down the long entrance hall. My eyes were drawn towards the window on the right hand side as we passed by. I could still hear sirens blaring from the street outside. People were actually peering in from the building next door. Something crackled beneath my feet and I twisted my foot sideways in order to see what I had stepped on. It was a flyer, recently affixed to the wall by several globs of adhesive tape, which had since lost their stickiness. "Oi, Watari." I held it up for his inspection. "Seems as though there was a book signing tonight."

Watari took a look at the flyer, narrowing his eyes and making a strange plucking noise with his tongue. This was one of his frequent habits that rose to the surface when he was examining something. "This author is pretty popular. I've read some of his work." He sighed, raking his hand back through his hair. "He was due to arrive at seven o'clock, so I don't think he would have been in there when the disturbance occurred. For what it's worth."

I placed the flyer on a nearby side table. "Still, if he was that popular, a lot of people would have turned up early, just to listen to his talk and get his signature." I groaned at the implication. "Explains why there was so many people in the library tonight… the casualty list must be pretty high." I felt my lower lip sag, quite outside of my control.

"Let's not count our chickens just yet." Watari urged, giving me a supportive smile. I tried to return it but felt that it was rather a weak effort. Taking a deep breath, I bolstered myself and approached the glass sliding doors on the left hand wall. Watari and I positioned ourselves on either side of it. We looked at one another and nodded.

"I'll go in first, to the right." I whispered, balancing the carbon rifle, quite uncomfortable with it as always. "You follow and take the left."

"Gotcha." Watari said, looking so unusually serious I almost wanted to giggle. "On three."

I bent my knees in order to keep my weight stationed, feeling almost every muscle in my trained body tighten accordingly. Nothing moved beyond the sliding doors, though since they were misted it was quite impossible to tell what we might have been walking in upon. It was best to be prepared, even if it meant going in a little tightly wound.

It was so quiet I actually heard Watari swallow as he too readied himself for the first initial sweep. When he spoke, his voice sounded strangely croaky. "One… two… three!"

I took the weight off of my leading foot and burst forward into the receiving range of the monitor controlling the sliding doors. They broke apart with a soft mechanical hiss. Tensing, I leapt through the swinging barrier beyond, going in low and swiveling sideways, aiming my weapon to the right. Watari followed suit, spinning in a complete clumsy circle, putting his back first to the outer entrance area before twisting about to cover the left with a very audible curse. I smiled appreciatively to myself as my eyes panned across my assigned area.

There were low set tables and chairs in the alcove to the right, obviously a reading area and surrounding bookshelves, packed both tightly and neatly. The staff were obviously meticulous. The ceilings were tall, I observed and the room was lit with the very same dim lanterns I had seen in the entrance hall. Apart from a number of computer workstations the entire library appeared old fashioned to me and as such, sort of charming in its' way. I moved my eye line about to examine between the bookshelves but gave only the most perfunctory glance to ensure that nothing was preparing to leap out and attack us. Nothing moved, apart from a small gray moth that persistently circled one of the lanterns, casting ghostly shadows against the wall onto which it was mounted.

"Clear!" I announced, lowering my weapon. Watari echoed me, having Okayed the enclosed study space to the entrances left. And we turned as one to face the space directly in front of us, which was the reception area and my mouth swung open as though on a hinge.

"Oh…" I breathed.

"… my god." Watari finished, his expression matching mine to a par.

The ground floor open reception area was clearly where the book signing was due to commence. I estimated that twenty or so bodies lay upon the floor or else had been thrown haphazardly across the surrounding tables. They were spread-eagled across each other, as if they had fallen whilst moving as a panicked crown. Most of the victims were emaciated, their milky white eyes wide and glaring, skin puckered against the bones as if all nourishment has been sapped from the body. Those that hadn't been subjected to this lay like slaughtered beasts, their blood soaking the dark red carpet in even darker stains. A dripping noise reached my eyes and I looked up in mounting disgust to find that a body was even hanging from the chandelier above our heads, blood dripping down onto the face of a deceased man lying directly below it. How it had managed to get up there in the first place is still as big a mystery to me today as it was then.

Watari's face was stricken with repulsion and for the first time he seemed quite incapable of finding something humorous to say. "It's worse than I thought…"

I cupped my fingers across my mouth, unable to wrench my eyes off of the dried shrunken face of the woman closest to me. Her skin looked like old leather, furrowed against the bones as though she had been mummified. The only smell that hung in the air was the usual coppery scent of blood, no such stench of rotten flesh as I had come to associate with this degree of degeneration. "You couldn't _possibly_ imagine this… It's a freakin' nightmare!"

Watari' hand closed gently about my upper arm, awakening me to reality again. I met his eyes. "Stay with me, mate." He urged, using one of his Beretta's to lift the barrel of the rifle back into alignment. "Whoever did this is probably still hanging about. We need to keep our guard up."

I scowled a little, feeling my temper start to reassert itself, which was a good sign I was still in control. "I'm not _that _stupid, you know." I took the lead, walking forward to examine the row of bookshelves behind the reception area when the lights suddenly flashed so glaringly bright that I was temporarily blinded. White dots danced before my eyes as I blinked dazedly, realizing as my vision cleared that we had been thrown completely into darkness. I backed up two hasty steps, reaching around for Watari and feeling his hair beneath my hand, which I gripped tightly.

"That you?" He said, in a slightly squeaky voice.

"Yeah…" I replied, staying completely still lest we stumble over the surrounding bodies in the dark. "Did the power go ou-"

The lights flashed again but this time, the entire scenery changed with it. I twirled about, putting my back against Watari's, taking in the altered surroundings with a horrified gasp. We had emerged into what appeared to be a large warehouse, tightly packed with row after row of flayed bodies, hanging from the distant ceiling by chains that had been tightly bound about their bruised and withered ankles. My body jolted with painful surprise as one by one, the long dead faces turned to take us in, their lips hitching upward and high-pitched voices joining a macabre chorus as the cadavers started to laugh at us. Their upper torso's quaked and rocked, whilst others shook and screamed and quivered as though still enduring their torturous predicament. The walls and floors were coated in blood and buckets were set beneath each body, overflowing with small fingers reaching out through the congealed vitae, searching us out-

And with a flash it was gone and we returned to the library. Dimly lit, the emaciated dead at our feet but otherwise the rational, reasonable reality I had knowingly entered into. My heart pounded wildly against my chest as Watari and I exchanged a horrified glance, distressed by what we had collectively experienced.

"What the Hell was _that?!_" I whimpered, panning the carbon rifle about just to ensure that nothing had snuck up on us in the meantime. Watari had to clear his throat before he was able to answer.

"Guess we just got a first hand introduction to those hallucinations Kohaku-san was talking about…"

The event description in the fax came rushing back to me but it still didn't make a great deal of sense. "Since when do people share the same hallucination?" I questioned irritably. "Come on Watari… it must be some kind of spell." I shuddered though it wasn't the least bit cold. "No wonder she was traumatized… what _was _that place you suppose?"

"Beats me kid." I noticed that he'd moved a little closer to me and I found that I really didn't mind. Especially when one second later, the lights flashed into darkness again. "Here we go again!" Watari narrated quite unnecessarily. I abandoned all pretences and grabbed for his arm, allowing the barrel of the carbon rifle to drop towards the ground as a result.

"Stay with me!" I whimpered, my heart beating so wildly I could feel the pulse echoing up at the base of my Adam's apple.

"Where the Hell do you suppose I'd be going in this mess?!" Watari growled back, nonetheless looping his arm about my waist to keep us together. The lights came back on, now revealing what appeared to be the sterile corridor of a hospital. I heard a squeaking noise behind me and spun around just in time to see six nurses with faces as blank as an eggs surface, come rushing towards me with a gurney balanced between them. I pushed myself back against the wall to the left, Watari flattening himself to the right to avoid being struck. The concrete fortification felt hard and cold and very real beneath the back of my shirt. I stared in horror as the nurses rushed by, almost scraping up against me as they passed. A twitching, veiled _thing_ was lying beneath a white sheet on top of the gurney, mumbling incoherently as blood bloomed from where the chest area might have been like a vivid red flower blossoming out of a snowy hillock.

"Jesus." Watari cursed, pulling himself away from the wall like a decal coming loose from a window in the heat. I followed suit, grabbing a hold of his arm again, feeling my pulse race. I had always hated hospitals. The last years of my life had been spent in one and I now avoided them if I could. Being forced back into one wasn't suiting me at all.

"What's going on?!" I whispered, eyes straying to an open doorway behind Watari where I could hear what sounded like raspy breathing. There were white curtained partitions, beyond which various, sinister silhouettes moved in a slope backed fashion, clutching objects that looked suspiciously like syringes. A high pitched child's scream cut through the air, sharper than a knife and I whimpered, tears coming to the corners of my eyes, frustrated by my lack of understanding.

"I don't like this Watari…"

"It's okay." He said, his hand tenderly caressing the small of my back. Though he too looked greatly unnerved by the veiled figures moving about in the neighboring room. "Close your eyes until it ends if that helps." No sooner had these words left his mouth then everything flashed again and we were plunged into darkness. When nothing new took its' place, Watari turned on his torch and shone the beam about, attempting to make heads or tales of our new surroundings. A sudden, drastic intake of breath told me that something about this particular place struck a nerve with him that the others, horrifying though they were, had not. "NO! No, we can't be here! NOT THIS PLACE!!"

Not much was visible by the light of the torch but what I was able to make out did not strike me as being particularly disquieting. The surrounding walls were composed of frayed wooden paneling, mildewed by age and succulence, giving off a particularly pungent, moldy odor. A door frame with no door wreathed in wooden vines stood straight and tall to my immediate left and an antique grandfather clock leaned haphazardly against the wall opposite me, the glass casing cracked directly down the center and missing a long jagged shard.

"Watari…" I murmured, not failing to notice how his arm shook beneath my mine. The torch beam trembled betrayingly.

"It doesn't make any sense…" He hissed, sounding quite undecided as to whether or not the scenery frightened or pissed him off. "Are they taking images directly from our mind or what?"

There was another flash of light and a veiled individual with a wide brimmed hat appeared briefly in the corner of the room. Watari shrieked and backed away, stepping on my foot in the process.

"OW!" I exclaimed, hopping about, holding my throbbing toe. "Watch where you're going!"

"It can't be… not you!" Watari moaned, the torch beam now shaking so badly I couldn't get a good look at whom we had been confronted with.

Another flash of light and the person appeared again, only this time they were much closer. I saw straight, square teeth shining in the refracting beam.

"NO!" Watari screamed. He dropped the torch and instead aimed both Beretta's at the figures chest, though I couldn't imagine how he could have made a clear shot with both hands shaking so violently. His eyes looked quite mad in the shadows. "Stay back, go away!"

He fired two rounds into the specters midriff to no effect. It smiled through the darkness, reaching out with fingers slicked deep dark black from what appeared to be blood. Watari whimpered with disbelief, stumbling over his feet as he attempted to back away.

"STOP IT!" I screamed, aiming my own torch beam up towards the ceiling, slicing it about as though it were in fact a sword and could cause physical damage to the one whom presided over these horrific hallucinations. "Whoever you are, stop this right now!" I cried out in alarm as something icy cold clutched about my ankle. Feeling as though I might regret it, I looked down to see a dark haired girl, mutilated by knife wounds holding onto my leg. She slowly looked up, revealing a heavily slashed face, a wet gaping hole where her eye once was. One of her cheeks hang limply, like a slap of meat, flapping from side to side as her neck violently contracted. I could almost feel my mind sliding sideways as familiarity tugged at my senses and my sanity fought with all it had to push that recognition aside.

"Asato… why did you… deserve to live…"

I slapped my hands over my face refusing to hear her, to even look at her. I felt if I did I might never awaken from the darkness.

"NO! STOP IT! Stop it, stop it, _STOP IT!_"

Quite to my surprise, the lights flashed again and everything returned to normal. I registered the change in luminosity through my closed eyelids and with deliberate caution, eased them open, sliding my hands away from my cheeks as I did. Watari and I both stood panting, faces pinpricked by drops of sweat, eyes equally wide with trauma bleeding outward from our minds.

Watari holstered both weapons, indolently tucking an erstwhile strand of hair behind his ear in an effort to convey calmness. His fingers still trembled quite badly however. "They're… taking those images from our minds… those things that most frighten us… and using them to waylay us."

"More like terrify us." I suggested bitterly, pressing my hands to my knees, panting for breath. "Are we going to have to go on like this the whole time we're in here?"

"Let's try casting Soul Shelter." Watari said, wringing his hands together, in an attempt to soothe the tremors I supposed. Soul shelter was a spell that in theory was intended to prevent outside influence from mana invasion; such as mind reading, possession, essentially anything that interfered with the mental or internal structure of a Shinigami. "It may stop the 'spell' from infiltrating our minds."

I nodded and straightened up, chanting along with Watari in order to cast the soul shelter. I hoped it would be enough to disable the unknown psychic attack that was being leveled against us.

"That oughta do it." Watari looked about sadly, eyes settling on the wall behind the reception desk. The two bullets he had previously fired were lodged deep into the plaster. "No wonder this turned into a bloodbath. Why I wouldn't be surprised if half of these people killed one another, what with all the confusion." He put his hand on my lower back, having noticed my similarly dismayed expression. "Hey… you okay?"

I told myself I had to be stronger than this. It was hard, yeah. It was _always _hard. But we were here to do a job and by doing it, we would hopefully be aiding the souls of those that had been lost in this bloodbath and also preventing further lives from being taken. Personal feelings and blubbering theatrics would simply have to take a backseat until later. It was time to be professional.

"Of course I am." I said, straightening up and getting my carbon rifle back into position. "We gonna do this, or what?"

Watari smiled, satisfied by my resolve. "Well all right then." He retrieved his torch and stored it back inside his holster, tying the thin jacket about his waist to allow for great maneuverability. I did the same. "Gird yer loins mate, it's open season on all demon's. I'm gonna head to the security room." He passed into my possession something that looked like a pamphlet. "Here. Library map. Found 'em by the front entrance. Might be a good idea to keep it handy."

"Thanks." I said, giving the map a brief looking over before stowing it in my pants pocket. "I'll do a sweep of the area."

"When you're done with the ground floor, meet me on the **1****st**** floor** by the security room." Watari stated, gesturing towards the staircase on the right hand side of the room. "'Rotsa ruck." He murmured over his shoulder as he headed for them.

"Watch your tail." I called after him, to which he offered a jaunty swish of his backside in response.

My heart still pounding in my ears, I took a moment to examine the map I had been given, using this as an excuse to allow my nerves to settle. The pamphlet's title was bold, bright and cheerful; seemingly out of place for such an old fashioned library.

_Welcome to the Tokyo Metropolitan Tachiagari Library!_

**Opening Hours**

Mon – Fri: 10:00a.m -9:00p.m.

Sat-Sunday/Holidays: 10:00a.m – 5:30 p.m.

_The Tokyo Metropolitan Tachiagari Library was built in 1967 as one of the main Metropolitan Libraries in the Tokyo bay area.  
The Library is open to the public for study and research.  
We welcome your use of our Library._

_**Library services**_

_The Tachiagari has four subject rooms: the General Reference Room on the first floor, the Social Science Room on the second, the Humanities Room in the eastern annex of the third floor, and the Tokyo Collection in the Special Collections Room in the expansive basement area. It contains around 21,000 volumes of local historical materials on Tokyo and its surrounding prefectures.  
_

_In the basement area, there can also be found the Periodicals Room, where newspaper and magazine articles may be viewed from the closed stacks on request. The second floor contains extensive storage areas, where specialized texts, recent volume additions and rare tomes are stored. Access to these areas, as well as certain annexes of the basement area are restricted and may be perused only with permission from the Library director.  
_

_Located on the third floor is atrium space, where astrological texts are kept in open shelves and the glass ceiling allows users to survey the night sky. Telescopic equipment can be found here for this purpose._

_We hope you enjoy your time with us!_

**~ X ~**

Now that I had a better understanding of where to go, I stowed the pamphlet in my pants pocket and with a deep breath, forced myself to follow slowly in Watari's wake. I moved into the reading area, wending my way carefully through the shelves. The crowd must have been almost entirely gathered in the receptionist area when the hallucinations began because I came across only two bodies in my search. The first, a bearded male, was splayed between neighboring shelves in the psychology section, his face pressed bizarrely against the lowest rung of books. The second I assumed had been an elderly woman. She was slumped in a chintz armchair, the novel _Nijushi no hitomi_** (2)** open on her lap, her wizened fingers preventing the pages from folding back upon themselves. I moved closer, noting the unnatural angle of the poor woman's neck, the result of which had caused her dentures to drop down against her shriveled tongue. She seemed to have died more peacefully than the other bodies I had passed. I wasn't at all surprised to find that this was hardly a comfort to me.

Nothing moved and I found no trace of either a spirit or the supposed demon responsible. The silence disturbed me. Ironic when you consider my surroundings. Weren't libraries idyllically supposed to be quiet? But still, even on an average day you would hear whispers pass between people, computer keyboards clicking, someone trying to quietly sneak a crisp without a great deal of success. In the distance sirens continued to sound but they were a poor consolation to my quavering nerves.

It was just when I thought I might go mad from the isolation of it all that a sudden high pitched buzzing came very close to making me to wet my pants. I looked down to seek out the disturbance and came across a gadget I was not yet familiar with, strapped to the holster belt. About the size of a standard cell phone, the front covering flipped open sideways, revealing two interface screens where I supposed you were able to address the person with whom you were communicating. Sure enough, as soon as I had opened this strange little piece of machinery, Chikawa's boyish features were grinning up at me from the left hand screen. My own face, a little whiter than I remembered it, had appeared on the right, wearing a very unappreciative expression.

"Hey, hey, hey! S'up, baby?" Chikawa crowed, bearing every one of his teeth at me. He was wearing a headset I noticed, whether to improve communication or simply because he thought it appropriate I'm not sure. "How ya like the new toys?"

"Chikawa-chan, what is this?" I asked, failing to keep the annoyance out of my voice. Fortunately, Chikawa wasn't intuitive enough to notice.

"The future, Tsuzuki-san! A way to improve field-agent communications! Course, it only works short distance… sort of like walkie-talkies, see? Designed 'em myself." He seemed as proud as a father showing off his first-born. "This way we can map your progress, deliver information and the like! Neat, huh?"

"Yeah… neat…" I half-heartedly agreed, keeping a prudent eye on my surroundings lest our conversation alert the perpetrator to my presence.

"So, how are things going?" The boy asked, fiddling with the microphone antenna, causing a slight rush of static through the receiving end. "What's to report?"

I pressed my back against the shelf behind me, trying to shield myself off from potential attacks, allowing my nerves to remain on edge in case I needed to react quickly. "Civilian casualties are high. I've counted at this stage twenty-five bodies on the ground floor. Watari has since moved onto the 1st floor."

"I'm on the line too." Chikawa's screen suddenly split into two and Watari's face appeared in the bottom half of the screen. I could see the windows of the security booth behind him, his pale features glowing red from the console lights. "Far as I can tell, no one survived up here either. Casualty toll is smaller. Looks like most folks had graduated downstairs. There are twelve victims, eleven are emaciated, only one suffered a violent death."

"Any luck with the security tapes?" I asked.

Watari bit his inside cheek, upper lip curling a little as evidence to his frustration. "Zilch. All the system screens are displaying static and the terminals keep bugging me for a password before they'll let me play around with them." With the arm he wasn't using to hold the telecom, he reached down to apparently fiddle with the screen in front of him. "I'm trying to hack in but it's taking me a little longer than I expected."

"Sounds wild." Chikawa said in a bland, contradictory tone of voice. "You encountered any hostiles yet?"

I was starting to get annoyed with him. Surely he hadn't integrated this system simply for the purpose of having a nice tête-à-tête while we were trying to work? We didn't have the luxury of stuffing about like this. "Chikawa, if you don't have anything relevant to say, would you please get off the line?"

Chikawa's expression soured. "Hey, there's no need to take that attitude. I was calling to tell you that the agent outside finished a scan of the building and he's reported a high level of _mana _based radiation." Watari's eyes sashayed from one side to the other as he absorbed this information. I understood that _mana _emissions affected large groups of individuals in precisely the same manner as run of the mill radiation. Of course, the effects as such were of the spiritual nature but they could be damaging and long lasting, neither of which was welcome news to us, the first agents on the scene. "I know this is going to sound completely irrelevant and unnecessary but you _need _to exercise caution. With that amount of mana about, any of those bodies could be reanimated."

"Reanimated?" I asked, though I didn't actually require an answer. Watari looked entirely delighted.

"We're talking bone-fide zombies, here? Man, I haven't seen a rot-walker in years!" He just about danced with glee at the very idea that one of these corpses might at any moment come dribbling through the bookshelves after him. "This is _totally _Biohazard!**(3)**"

I rolled my eyes. "Watari, you know your video game references go right over my head." I directed my attention back towards Chikawa's portion of the screen. "Thanks Chikawa-chan. But I don't think that's going to be a prob-"

"Tsuzuki behind you!" The boy screamed and Watari was yelling out a similar warning, their faces conveying matching expressions of panic. I didn't give myself time to question their reactions. I logged off of the system and bounded back from the shelf, swiveling around to see the male corpse I had stumbled upon in the Psychology section, swinging a chair down towards me. A second before it would have disintegrated over my head, I dove out of the way and steadied the small rifle, holding up one hand as an insistence that the emaciated individual desist in his attack.

"Stop!" I ordered, dropping my hand back to steady the rifle barrel. Much to my great disconcertion, the bearded man moved closer. His skin seemed to swell as he walked, taking on more life-like qualities, so that he appeared less wasted by the moment. His eyes however continued to glow with a red, hateful hue, almost seeming to burn through me.

"Don't move!"

The corpse leered, its' dried tongue lashing out over its' lips and hurled a tangled, aggressive barb of speech at me. I couldn't understand what he was saying but it was vaguely familiar in context.

"What the-" I mumbled as I attempted to focus my thoughts. "… Sounds like the demonic lingo…"

The corpse wasn't prepared to wait for my eventual epiphany because it suddenly lunged toward me, hissing and moaning. Caught by surprise, I fired a shot at its' knee and missed by an embarrassingly wide margin. The second bullet caught it in the thigh and caused it to momentarily stumble. It quickly regained its' footing however and was now close enough to grab me around the neck, hoisting me up into the air, with more strength than I would have expected its' withered muscles to have. I gagged at the constriction to my throat, managing to kick the assaulting cadaver in the head and flip backwards out of its' grasp. As it writhed upon the floor, I stamped down upon its' head, causing part of its' scalp to slide free in the process. I scanned the body for any sign of the soul that previously inhabited it but there was nothing there that suggested its' original owner remained. Not even in part. I was looking only at a remnant. A dangerous remnant. And I absolved myself of this nuisance by sending a bolt of _mana_ directly into its' head. With a gurgling moan, the bearded man slumped backwards, reflexively twitching once or twice before his movements finally stilled. I checked his pulse, his chest to ensure that he was not breathing and then conducted a secondary scan of his body for any remaining trace of life. Satisfied that he was dead beyond rising, I allowed myself to exhale the breath I must have been holding since his surprise attack. I leaned back, wiping off my forehead and massaging the healing bruises that now adorned my neck like a grisly red necklace.

"That's a relief… talk about bad timing." I remarked to myself. The communications device peeped urgently from where I'd dropped it and I hurried over to retrieve it.

"Tsuzuki! Yoo-hoo Tsuzuki, pick up! … I have chocolate, over." Watari said once I'd re-opened the lines. "I heard gunshots. You okay? Fuck man, was that some scary shit seeing that thing creeping up on you from behind!"

I saw my face on the right hand screen display a very tart expression. "Think it was scary for _you? _Hey and thanks again Chikawa for your plot initiating narrative. I just encountered a hostile."

"One of the corpses?" Chikawa questioned unnecessarily. We _had _only just discussed the possibility.

I decided not to be rude about it. "Yeah. It attacked me. I had to neutralize it."

"Didn't bite you did it?" The boy questioned, leaning offensively close to the screen as though trying to examine every possible inch of me. He bared his teeth and widened his eyes as though wincing from a sharp and sudden pain. "Watch out or you'll be a zombie yourself before long."

"How will we tell?" Watari asked, batting his eyelashes at me. I used my middle finger to rub the corner of my eye, gaining a laugh from him in response.

"Shinigami already are a breed of zombie, kid." Zombies are of course the reanimated corpses of the deceased and Shinigami are precisely that, only our spirit and consciousness are fully restored and our body remains in stasis, so that we do not decompose, age or suffer the ill effects of injuries and terminal illness. The average run of the mill zombie is a dead person whose reanimation is incomplete. Hence, we are at base level, cut from the same cloth. A zombie is what you might call a failed Shinigami. "Anyway, I'm fine. A little bruised here and there but nothing major. Anything else to report?"

Chikawa nodded, suddenly all business. "I sent out a bunch of security droves to watch over the library." Security droves were low-level tracker demons in the form of birds, which could be instructed to find places or watch over particular areas and alert the summoner to any discrepancies. Chikawa was wise to have thought of it. " If anything busts out, I'll let you guys know right away. As of yet, nothing has left. So the big bad that did all this should still be in there somewhere with you. I suggest you go upstairs and regroup with Watari-sempai. _Stay together._" He reiterated with a stern, motherly expression.

Watari laughed. "That's sweet. You worried about me, kid?"

The boy groaned in a long-suffering sort of way. "If you were more competent I wouldn't feel the need to worry so much." He leaned closer to the screen. "Keep an eye on him for me would ya, Tsuzuki-san? You know he's next to useless."

"Stop, you're making me blush."

I chuckled softly, giving Chikawa a reassuring thumbs up. "Got it. I'm heading upstairs now. Keep us informed of any new developments."

The boy grinned, winking back at me. "Roger that. Over and out."

"See ya soon." Watari contributed and both of them logged off, neighboring screens shrinking into blackness.

**_- EC -_ **

**(1) Fake Identities: **No great significance here. Tsuzuki's fake ID **Hotaru** means 'firefly' or 'lightening bug' and is a premature reference to Tatsumi's thoughts on fireflies in the Gensoukai arc. 'Same things are more beautiful when left in darkness'. Watari's ID **Chinatsu **means 'a thousand summers' and is simply a reference to his over the top personality.

**(2) _Nijushi no hitomi_: **"Twenty-four Eyes." A well-known and extremely touching novel written in the early 1920's by the author Sakae Tsuboi. It is a semi autobiographical novel that tells the story of a young woman who moves to the town of Tanoura to teach in a small rural school. Has since been made into a movie!

**(3) _Biohazard: _**Japan's name for 'Resident Evil', a well-known video game series where people who are infected by a pharmaceutically engineered virus turn into zombies. Trust Watari to come through with the video game references!

**A/N: **I've never been much of a zombie person myself but they are terribly hard to resist in the horror genre! The next chapter is rather more extreme than this, so an early warning to you lovely readers won't go astray I should think. Only four more parts to go and then back into _Dark Adaptation_ proper! Please review if you enjoyed, it helps with the old self-esteem and encourages me to keep on doing what I truly enjoy doing. Catch ya next time!

_**- EC -**_


	4. The Librarian

**Dark Adaptation – Dead Men Working.**

**DISCLAIMER: **Yami no Matseui and its' affiliated characters, concepts and locations belong to Yoko Matsushita and I am earning nothing but the sole satisfaction of telling this story to you fine people.

**A/N: **Warning; incredible gore, disturbing imagery and the like in this chapter. You have been warned. Proceed with caution!

**~ X ~**

_"The lantern bearer lights the way_

_For those who no more seize the day_

_Blind eyes peer out from every head_

_That crowds the carriage of the dead..."_

_**~ Unknown**_

**~ X ~**

**The Librarian**

**Tsuzuki**

I tucked the device away and worked slowly back towards the stairwell, all too aware of how many bodies remained in the receptionist area. Thankfully, the bearded man appeared to be the only one whom had gotten it in his head to move about. The others all remained where they had fallen. I swept the room once more and having assured myself beyond doubt that nobody was lurking on the ground floor, I headed up the stairs and entered the first floor. The security booth was built into one of the walls on the left hand side and I peeked through the window to see Watari increasingly occupied with the terminal. I waved at him through the glass and indicated with my hands that I was going to take one last look around the area. He nodded and mouthed 'Be careful' back at me, before returning his attention to the glowing screen in front of him.

The first floor had a large computer area to my immediate front and isles of bookshelves for as far as the eye could see to the left. I stepped over a splayed body and the pile of books he must have been carrying, apologizing internally as I did. He didn't lunge up and sink his teeth into my ankle, so I made my way into the study area unhindered, crouching down from time to time in order to check beneath the benches. I wondered to myself whether Watari had thought to bring any medical supplies. It would be just our luck to find a survivor, badly injured and not have so much as a BandAid to offer. I could only hope he had more foresight than I'd had-

_THUMP!_

A sound of something heavy falling to the floor, somewhere close by. I raised myself up from the crouch I had only just assumed, turning to face the far wall from whence the muffled noise had come. I was suddenly reminded of every cheesy late night horror movie I had ever seen; a seemingly empty building, a strange noise, some half-witted idiot blindly barreling through a door and finding nothing, only to get his head lobbed off… I shuddered, deciding then and there that I was never going to stay behind at the Ministry so late ever again. Bad things happened to those who hung about to let bad things happen to them.

Shunting my nerves aside, I started towards one of the two doors on the far wall, shoes clacking loudly against the wooden floor. A slide in sign said that this was **'Storage' **and when I paused to check the map Watari had given me, I saw that it was actually composed of a number of winding corridors and affixed rooms. Deciding not to waste any more time, I set my hand on the door lever and pushed it down, a little surprised to find that it was unlocked. I slung the rifle behind my shoulder, neglecting its' use in favor of my own _mana _specific abilities and pushed the door open fast and hard with my foot, stepping through and swinging about to appraise the corridor beyond.

There were a number of boxes placed randomly about the hallway, overflowing with books. A gray locker stood against the right hand wall, locked as far as I could tell. It was dimly lit by modern light fixtures, one of which was flickering on and off, clearly in need of replacement. The illumination was more than enough however to make out the thick trails of blood on the walls, adorned slapdash and without purpose. It was as though someone had picked up a can of red paint and simply splashed it around the room for effects sake. I swept the hallway with my eyes, taking in the stately elegance of even this, the storage area and realized that I was alone. Whoever or _whatever _had made that noise, was not there.

I cleared my throat. Called out, "Anyone there?"

Silence.

"… No answer. Never a good sign. Unless of course I'm dealing with a deaf and or incredibly rude individual. Can't rule anything out." I knocked the safety in place on the rifle and started for the first door down the corridor. Light beamed out into the hallway and I could see the edge of a coffee station through the opened doorway. I peeked inside, seeing no one. A coffee cup sat on the bench top, steam still curling from the surface of the dark liquid. Someone had been in here recently, perhaps unaware of what had occurred downstairs. I hoped this meant that there was a survivor. Judging however, from the amount of runny, red stuff in the hallway I gathered my chances were slim. And growing slimmer by the second the more that I dawdled about. I moved on, reaching out to open the second door I came across, turning the knob slowly, listening for any sound or movement on the other side. I could hear nothing over the sound of my own harried breathing, amplified by the halls echoing acoustics.

The door opened into a brightly lit storage place, filled with tall, gray sliding shelves in which books were placed for special purposes, I supposed. I quickly checked both directions. Nothing moved between the shelves. The entire room was gray and dark, even with the lights burning so brightly in the high ceiling.

I wrinkled my nose, frowning. There was a vague odor in the air, a faint scent of something unpleasant – something familiar. I stood in the doorway another moment, trying to place the smell.

Some years ago, I had been assigned to investigate a series of murders taking place in the city of Nobeoka, in Kyushu. With my then partner Koboyashi, I traced the murders back to a Chemical factory, upon the discovery that a number of the victims sported alarming degenerative burns; caused by Sulfuric acid. As we had been moving about the factory in the dead of night, the paranormal killer who had been perpetrating the crimes confronted me. In the ensuing fight, I was knocked off of one of the landings only to alight upon a series of closed over tanks situated directly below the awning, causing them to burst open. Inside two of them, were the pulpy, putrefying remains of three, until then, undiscovered victims, left to decompose with the aided effects of the acid. They had been there so long that they were barely recognizable as having once been human. And my nose had been about an inch from the sludgy residue.

Much to the amusement of Kobayashi, I'd vomited my evening's sweet intake all over the carcasses, unable to hold back in time to afford them any sense of dignity. I managed to crawl two feet away, before I was violently ill again.

I still remembered the acid-decayed scent of mildewed rot, like thickly soured cream or milk; the same smell that lingered in the doorway then, like an echo that would not dissipate.

I stepped into the room proper and searched through the shelves, finding that the smell grew fainter the further I moved from the door. Satisfied that there was nothing to be found in the storage space, I returned to the corridor, breathing through my mouth as the stink came back to haunt me. I couldn't imagine where it might have been coming from. I moved a little further down the hall, looking from side to side as I made my way towards the next door and came to a stop as the flickering over head light picked up something beside the steel locker I had just passed.

For a split second, my mind couldn't accept what I was seeing. I forced myself to crouch and take a good hard look.

_A silver teaspoon, adorned by brown drops of still warm coffee_-

The rest was in shadow and with morbid reluctance, I withdrew the torch from my belt and flicked it on, aiming the beam down in order to illuminate what until then, I had left to hopeless introspection.

_- and a disembodied human hand still clutching it, hacked off brutally at the center of the __forearm._

I drew a sharp intake of breath, finding my eyes flick betrayingly down towards the ragged tendrils of veins trailing across the wooden floor like tentacles from a jellyfish. The flesh looked suspiciously, _gnawed _open, sporting a number of bloodied teeth marks, particularly about the bloodied serration.

It seemed grimly ironic, that only minutes ago I had been wondering whether or not we had the supplies with which to treat an injured survivor. Assuming that this individual was still alive, he or she was _severely _wounded. God only knows how I would even _begin _to treat a severed arm, limited experience that I had in basic triage.

_CRASH!_

I turned my attention away from the dismembered limb as the doorway down the far end of the corridor came crashing open. An ashen-faced young man came stumbling through, careening off of the walls as he drew closer, holding his right hand up high beneath his opposing armpit. I could see from where I was standing that the front of his checkered shirt was soaked through with blood.

So, I had found the owner of the missing arm. And what's more, he appeared to be wholly conscious if not frightened out of his wits. The reason of which shortly thereafter presented itself.

A broad shouldered man in blue janitor's coverall's came lumbering out the door after him, eyes glowing the same hateful red hue as the bearded man's in the reading area. And just like the bodies downstairs, the Janitor's skin was dried and weathered, almost gray in color beneath the glowing iridescent lights. His clothes were spattered with still wet blood, some of which foamed on the corners of his lips. Flaps of skin hung from his sunken cheeks, lustrous eyes dancing with a hint of intelligent malice as it reached for the terrified young man with bent and buckled bloodstained fingers.

"HELP ME!" The boy screamed, bouncing off of the left hand wall and rebounding with such force he just about spun in a complete circle. I slid the rifle under my arm and back into my hands, gesturing wildly to the right with my head.

"Move, move, move!" I urged, raising the gun and taking aim in the same instance I heard a soft, hungry moan behind me. The bad smell somehow seemed to intensify and I realized with cold, cutting dread that I had neglected to _check _whether or not the steel locker had in fact been locked as I had passed it.

_BANG!_

The hoary door came flying back so hard and fast it bounced in its' hinges and the withered female corpse dropped directly onto my back, dried peeling fingers grasping at me as she lunged for my throat. I gathered she must have hidden in the locker when the hallucinations began but was not so lucky as to escape the withering effect that had befallen the others. I could feel her skin through the back of my shirt, somehow slimier than the male corpse I had previously encountered. I swallowed down a meaty gag and drove the butt of the Carbon rifle into the woman's abdomen, driving her back just enough to give me some space to maneuver. Her fingers still held me resiliently and I swiveled about, bringing my leg up into a defensive roundhouse kick. The side of my foot collided with the undead woman's face, shaving off half of her forehead in the process. She stumbled, veering sideways and around me but not stopping. Instead of renewing her onslaught against me, she changed direction and went towards the young man, now only feet away from us. I tried to stop her by grabbing a hold of her short, dark hair and pulling. With a ripping sound, the woman's scalp separated itself from her skull and I lost my balance, stumbling backwards and falling onto my ass, the dried head of hair tangled around my fingers, wispy skin still attached to the roots.

The woman screamed something in that unfamiliar language the bearded man had used as she fell on the boy, who bawled as her fingers dug into either side of his face, her mouth going directly for his eye. At the same moment, the blood spattered Janitor caught up to them and clasped the back of the boys head in both hands, screaming something accusatory at the woman as he attempted to yank the youth away.

"Let go of him!" I screamed, struggling to get back to my feet, tossing the wizened scalp aside in order to bring the carbon rifle up. Without hesitating, I fired a shot into the back of the woman's neck, leaving a dark black hole in her flesh. She wailed, her grip on the young man seeming to tighten rather than relax. I raced towards them, bringing a _mana-cloaked_ fist up in order to strike the woman but didn't anticipate the calculated movements with which she and the bloodied janitor reacted. They spun, using the boy as a shield in order to force me to relinquish my attack and when I had nullified the _mana _force, spun him about like a club. The boys limp legs collided with the side of my face and I was thrown backwards from the combined force of their attack, the base of my skull slamming against the wall hard enough to momentarily blacken my vision.

Through the spots that throbbed in my vision, I could make out the anguished eyes of the boy as the once Janitor buried his fingers into the sockets, bursting the orbs and extinguishing that expression forever. I cried out in pity, forcing myself back to my feet and diving towards them, fighting back the sharp pangs of pain from my skull that made me retch. I was less than a foot away, when the scalped woman grasped the boys face, her fingers digging down deep through the flesh beneath his jawbones. There was a creaking sound, like a rusty door resting back in its' hinges and then with a mighty wrench, the undead woman pulled the entire frontal portion of his skull free.

I froze, moaning with anguish at the sight of the boys' brains sliding down from the rear portion of his cranium, held in place by the cerebral cords attached to the spine. Blood and cranial fluid cascaded down over his still trembling body and the scalped woman stumbled away with her prize, moaning with delirious phlegmy anticipation as she dipped her face into the front portion of the boys skull, like a child chewing the inside of a coconut for the white flesh.

The Janitor hissed at her but made no further move to reclaim this apparently negligible treat and instead occupied himself with what remained, diving his hand into the awning cavity and scraping it about in order to collect up the brain matter, which he brought to his eager lips. Before he bit in however, his gleaming eyes made contact with me and from his mouth came the unmistakable sound of familial Japanese.

"_Fancy a taste, Shinigami?"_

I had seen enough. I raised the rifle, aiming deliberately at the raw blood speckled, layer of the woman's head and fired. Dark holes opened up in the back of her knobby skull, sending tiny rivers of fluid and meaty tissue through her lower jaw. The flesh she had been in the midst of devouring came spurting out of her mouth in a bloody, throaty exhalation and she crumpled, the boys frozen fear stricken face sliding free of the skull and landing wetly on the carpet as it dropped from her hand. I tried not to look at it as I spun about, ejecting a blight force of _mana _unto the Janitor, shaving away the entire upper portion of his face and sending his own brains splattering against the wall beside him. He fell with a heavy sigh, collapsing on top of the boys' body in a spreading red lake.

I didn't want to make any bets on him staying down. Keeping my eyes facing forward, I backpedaled up the corridor, reaching out without looking and wrenching open the doorway back into the central library area. I felt an almost embarrassing surge of relief shoot through me as the door immediately clicked open and I dove through, slamming it shut and then pushing my back against it as I paused for a moment to gather my wits.

What a nightmare this was turning out to be! Something just wasn't right… these weren't the lazy, slow, mindless attentions of zombies. They were guided somehow, seeming to possess a kind of intelligence entirely atypical of their make. The way that the Janitor had actually mocked me… and that he knew I was a _Shinigami_. Not to mention the speed and the power with which they had decimated that boy!

I felt a gag welling up from my stomach and swallowed, forcing it back. I couldn't reconcile myself for not acting fast enough to save that poor man. However, if what Chikawa said was right, the _mana _blight would have no doubt seen him irreversibly affected somehow or another. Regardless… it was such an appalling way to die.

My heart hammered in my chest as I double-timed across the room, thinking all the while of Watari. What if these things had attacked him? _God_ I would lose my mind if I were forced to bear witness to such a sight! I raced over to the security booth, slapping both hands against the glass and pressing my nose and face in between them. For a moment, I couldn't see Watari and I panicked, thinking that he might have been wandering about the library, ignorant to the danger, when his head suddenly reappeared above the computer terminals, a red wire clutched between his teeth. He caught sight of me staring in at him and with a soundless scream, toppled backwards out of sight again, apparently mistaking my wide-eyed maniacal expression of panic as something else entirely. When he had recovered, he made his way over to push open the terminal doorway that was down an offshoot. I stepped inside and slumped against him, pressing my face down into his shoulder and ejecting a small sob.

"What happened?" He asked, shutting the door and bringing me up into the terminal area so that I could take a seat. "Jesus, you look like death warmed over. No pun intended. Here, have some water."

He poured me a cup from the nearby water dispensary and pushed it into my trembling hands. It took me a while to speak; the images of the poor boys death were still running through my mind.

"I'm g-glad you're o-kuh-ku-kay…" I chattered, dribbling water all down my chin as I tried to take a sip. Watari looked at me in grave concern, using his handkerchief to wipe away the fluid that was threatening to run down my neck.

"Were there more hostiles? Are you hurt?" He took a closer look at my expression and seemed to then click to what must have happened. "Did you find a survivor?"

Tears squeezed out of the corners of my eyes as I nodded, my bottom lip beginning to tremble so badly I found myself quite unable to speak. Watari understood however.

"You found a survivor and you were unable to save them." He scuttled towards me in a crouching position and reached out to take my free hand between both his own. He gripped it tightly, running his palm up and down my arm. "Tell me what happened. When you're ready."

A took a moment to compose myself and then it all came exploding out of me. I told him everything, leaving no stone unturned, feeling myself grow steadily calmer as though I were leaching the poison of that wretched encounter from my flesh. Watari listened intently, occasionally clearing his throat or shifting uncomfortably but ever constant in his unwavering attention.

When I had finished speaking, he sat for a moment in complete silence, eyes to the side as though thinking. Finally, with a parting squeeze to my hand, he climbed to his feet and opened up the telecom device, relaying to Chikawa the information I had just given him. He asked the boy to run that information through the Ministries database and see if the paranormal description matched anything. That done, he placed the telecom back within his belt and then, with a deep sigh, reached down to slide both arms beneath my armpits, forcefully lifting me back onto my feet.

"Tsuzuki, look at me." He ordered, once I was standing. I looked into his eyes so awash by a pungent sense of shame that I could barely bring myself to do it. "You did everything you could. And it's awful, I know but the job's not done yet. We gotta keep going." He gripped my biceps tightly, reassuringly. "Remember how I said on the telecom that only one individual had died violently up here? She was torn from limb to limb, Tsuzuki. I found bits of her from one side of the computer area to the other. I didn't find the head at all. God knows what happened to it. I can't pretend like we won't encounter worse but we need to be prepared for it. So, take a deep breath," We both inhaled together and then let it out, dramatically relaxing all the muscles in our bodies as we did. "Pull yourself together and let's push on."

I bowed my head, acknowledging his words and feeling cold, calm professionalism reassert control. I _had _seen worse in my time. Not much worse mind but I'd managed to push through each and every time regardless. I would just have to find that same resolve to do so again and hopefully help somebody else before the same fate befell them as that poor boy.

"Yeah." I said, smiling painfully as Watari released my arms and returned to the console, picking up the red wire he had previously abandoned in order to tend to me. "It's all right, I'm okay now." I slung the rifle's strap back up over my arm and headed for the door, loathe to find that my knees still felt rather weak. "Guess I'll go finish the sweep."

Watari looked over at me from beside the terminal hatch, now clutching a blue wire with exposed silver cords protruding from the end. I can't say I'm sure that it was the safest thing for him to be doing but then again, I know jack about machinery.

"I think you should wait until I'm done here. I'm just gonna try this one last trick; see if I can't boot it up. Don't think I'll have much luck though," He said, casting an ornery look at the snow filled screens hanging from the booth's ceiling. "These things are all fucked from just before our apparent 'demon' turned up. Can't get nothing besides that. But I figure I should try everything before admitting defeat."

I shook my head as I turned the knob and pushed the door back into the library open. "It's okay, I think I'll be fine now. Besides, in the time it takes for you to get done, our possible assailant is getting further and further away. I'll just stay in this area, so you can come find me when you're done, eh?"

Watari looked over at me uncertainly, seeming to be on the verge of saying something else. But then the moment was gone and he waved his hand dismissively, as he ducked his head beneath the uncovered interior of the terminal's access panel and set to work twisting exposed wires with a small pair of electrician's pliers.

"Suit yourself, mate. Just be careful. Call on the intercom if ya need me, okay? Just press the upper black button on the left hand side and it'll automatically tune into my station."

I gave a mock salute before slipping out of the security booth and back into the library proper. I panned my eyes about the surrounding area and remembered that I hadn't actually got around to examining the bookshelves to the right hand side of the stairwell. This area was _huge_ to say the least, the far wall some two hundred meters or so from where I was currently standing.

I checked over the rifle, replacing spent cartridges before I tentatively approached the first alley between the isles, stepping once more over the corpse that had been carrying the books. My nerves were still shot from what had happened in the storage area and I was poised quite literally on the edge of anticipation, certain that at any moment this body, like the others' would spring to life and gnaw through my sock.

Fortunately for me, this particular cadaver hadn't contracted the flagrant 'wander lust' that others of his kin had so recently succumbed to and was kind enough to remain face down as I bypassed him.

I'd had just allowed myself to feel a moment of quiet relief, when my frayed nerves were literally shattered as the closest bookshelf came toppling over in my direction. Thick science volumes on Quantum Physics and Chemistry came raining down towards me and I imagined they could so some serious damage if they came into contact with my head. Adrenalin pumping, I kicked off from the floor and managed to dive out of the way, going through the fundamentals of a shoulder roll even as I came crashing down onto the carpet, slamming my elbow into the bookcase to my right as I rolled back onto my feet, body aching from my dodgy landing. I hopped onto one knee, just like I'd seen in the military movies and readied my rifle. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone darting away from the other side of the aisle in which I was standing and gave chase, my heart slamming against the wall of my chest as I sprinted around the towering shelves.

On the far side of a shambolic bookshelf stacked high with romance novels, I stumbled upon a thin hooded figure, standing on a line of seats in a second concealed computer area, looking out the windows. He was clearly distracted and didn't glance around at my noisy intervention.

"Freeze!" I ordered, though I sadly lacked some authority on account of my fumbling my grip on the gun.

The hooded figure was swaying uncertainly from side to side and still refused to turn about and adhere to my presence. "You… why are… you here…?"

"I am a Shinigami of the Summons Section of the Judgment Bureau." I said, trying to station my weight so as to better examine the figure with which I had been confronted. He was slender, standing around five foot five and dressed in a black and yellow wind sheater with the hood pulled low over his forehead. Something was moving across the visible portion of his face and I realized with a start that it was in fact the shadows themselves, cast from the overhang of the hood. They squirmed and wended across his features, concealing what might have otherwise been open to inspection. "And I'm guessing from that little face application, that you're not a regular patron either."

The boy seemed to groggily absorb this and then, with a resentful huff, tilted his head to the side, in order to take me in. "My powers seem to have little effect on you… it's not enough… not yet…"

"What?!" I snapped.

"You'll see…" He droned in an irritatingly self-assured tone of voice. "The time is almost upon us. You'll all bear witness to the coming of the new age…"

"Why did you kill all these people?!" I demanded, moving in closer, wondering whether Watari would finish up in the security booth soon.

The boy held up both hands as though offering something not plainly visible to the naked eye. "To better understand the limitations of my abilities… of course." He curled one of his hands into a distinctive cup shape and held it to the side of his hood, where I suppose his ear might have been. "Listen… the darkness within you is trying to communicate… It's… calling out…"

"I… I don't…" A sharp ringing noise suddenly burst through my skull and escalated to the degree that I was forced to clasp my temples with each hand. "Ugh… what… what's happening…?" I felt my temperature rise so dramatically that the scent of burning flesh actually assailed my nostrils. "My skin…" Unable to tolerate the pain, I dropped to one knee, shaking my head from side to side like a dog with water in its' ears. "… It's… burning!!"

The keening ringing in my ears was unexpectedly punctured by the sound of a gunshot and the hooded boy lowered his arms, looking emotionlessly over towards the shelves from where Watari was emerging. A computer screen to the left of the boy was emitting great choking clouds of smoke from a hole that had appeared in the center of the screen. Watari's face had gone an interesting shade of puce but he didn't allow himself time to be embarrassed over his misdirected aim and shifted the Beretta's barrel over so that it was now firmly in the vicinity of the boys midsection.

"You might want to keep it down, runt. We _are_ in a library you know." He moved quickly to my side and toed me with his foot. "Hey… you okay?"

I gave my head one final persuasive shake in order to clear it and then vaulted to my feet, steeling myself and reclaiming the carbon rifle, which I had dropped in my haste to rectify the state of my skull. The boys sinisterly shadowed features swiveled back and forth between us.

"…not one but _two _whelps." He said, bemusedly. I saw the barest hint of a smile form beneath the lower most curl of the shadows amassing upon his face. "Now I see… it is no coincidence that you are both here. Your souls… they are communicating with my own…"

"Communicating?!" I snapped, feeling my temper flare as heatedly as my skin had only moments earlier. "What do you mean? Start making some sense, Goddammit!"

The boy silently extended his hand towards Watari who staggered, the flesh of his arm sizzling. He seemed to fight off whatever this effect was however and repositioned his weapon, much to my great admiration.

"You should be awakening soon…" The boy said softly, quite unperturbed that his efforts had not succeeded.

Watari smiled pleasantly, eyes twinkling. "I'm as awake as I'll ever need to be, mate. And that's awake enough to drag your bony ass back to the Ministry for judgment."

The boy smiled that strange, vague smile again. "That will be the end result of our meeting today, my friend." His neck swiveled so that his veiled face was directed towards me once more. "The seal is broken… the more you employ that darkness, the more you shall become like me…"

My frustration, until that moment had been boiling beneath the surface but now seemed to explode out of me. "I don't understand you! Employ the darkness… this is gobbledygook to me!"

"Don't listen to him, Tsuzuki." Watari said, his lip curling with intense dislike as he stared upon the boys delicately balanced figure. "He's just messing with us… trying to stall for time."

The boy rolled his shoulders carelessly. "Why should I be needing to stall for time? Believe what you wish; it makes no never mind to me. You are all fated to meet the same end."

I took another step forward. "Who ARE you?"

Once more I was graced by the strange, incomprehensible smile and the boys voice dropped a nuance, so that it became a deep rasp, the signature call of a dangerous snake.

"I am the enemy of the Waking World."

I saw Watari roll his eyes from the corner of my vision. "Oh, of _course_, don't know why I didn't pick up on that right away. Tell me; is that hyphenated?"

"You mock me… but I believe you understand who I am more than you pretend. After all, you and I are not so far removed from one another…"

Watari clenched the gun tighter, the muscles of his temples stretching tightly over a vein that had began to angrily throb beneath the thin wall of flesh. "Shut your goddamn mouth."

"Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha…" The boy chuckled, leaping down from the wall of seats and turning to make his way out of the enclosed space, humming a tune to himself as he went. He appeared entirely cavalier concerning our presence, as though we were no more deserving of attention than casual passersby on a suburban street. I was not unaccustomed to being sneered at by those I came into conflict with but to be treated with this outright indifference was something I was certainly not adapted to. It occurs to me now that this insult was no doubt enforced as a means of incensing us, increasing the likelihood that we would react hastily. Well, it had certainly strummed the right cords in me, I must confess. I felt that insolent air of apathy cut into me and enflame my mind, as if the impertinent boy had questioned the virtue of my very mother.

"Hey! Where the Hell do you think you're going?!" I exclaimed, holstering the gun in favor of making after him. "We're not through with you yet!"

The boys' movement gradually slowed as he was about to disappear behind a neighboring shelf and he curled his slender fingers about it, leaning back to appraise me in a most unnerving manner.

"Oh, but do not fret, my boy. I have a wonderful gift for you." He whisked out of sight and I moved to go after him but noticed Watari seemed distracted, his eyes and guns lowered towards the floor.

"Watari… what's wrong…? Come on, we have to detain the suspect!"

Watari sighed, as though the entire weight of the world was upon his shoulders and then forced his face up, bearing a falsely cheery smile that didn't seem to quite convey any true warmth behind it. "Yeah, right… let's get a move -" He paused, tilting his head to the side and holding up a hand to keep me from speaking, though he needn't have bothered. I too could hear what it was that had caught his attention. Someone else's voice was coming from down the isle into which the hooded boy had vanished. It was a soft, almost inaudible utterance that I couldn't quite discern from my current position and it was with deliberate ease that Watari and I moved around the dividing shelf to see where it was coming from.

A long line of bookshelves terminated into a dead end against the far wall, dark from lack of illumination. A tall figure moved erratically in the shadow, human in shape though I could distinguish no visible arms in the gloom. It seemed to be facing the shelf beside it and in the silence that followed, I was finally able to make out just what it was saying, though I can't pretend it made much sense to me.

"Mm-hmm. Oh! Oh… yes… I see…"

The source to which this figure was speaking must have said something attention grabbing because the next thing I knew, the cryptic mass had spun to face us with a high pitched, somehow indignant shriek of the kind most women enforce if you were to accidentally walk in upon them changing. It was approaching us, one arm raised and waving what appeared to be a book. Upon closer inspection I could see that the corners of the book were capped by sharp metallic edges, glinting sinisterly in the dim light.

"Why you…!" A weedy voice screamed from the shadows clutching the book. "Little beasts! Are you making a mess in the library? This is unforgivable! You dirty, wretched children!"

As the figure moved into the light, his features were thrown into alarming clarity. A tall balding man, with protuberant bloodshot eyes that made him appear rather manic. His glasses hung crookedly off of one ear, blue striped shirt and pinstriped pants soaked through with blood. If you were to ignore the expression on his face, he looked to me like a very typical, uptight librarian, as evidenced by his nametag, splattered with a few splotches of blood but otherwise legible. What immediately drew the eye however was that 'Sakamoto Hiro' was bound from head to ankle in white plastic binding, the type usually employed to fasten large parcels together. His right arm was pinned down the line of his body by use of thick staples, holding his hand useless and immobile. Peculiarly, he was not bound to anything; the plastic binding simply slowed his movement.

"Watari…?" I murmured in an oddly high-pitched voice that didn't sound at all like myself.

He seemed quite taken aback and didn't respond for a moment or two, simply staring at Sakamoto Hiro as he made his languid approach, swinging the book as though shooing away a particularly irksome fly.

"I think…" Watari drawled with a delayed swallow. "That um… this was the uh… librarian."

I didn't resist the temptation to roll my eyes. "I figured that much out. What do you suggest we do? I mean, is he dead or has he just been driven mad by the visions?"

"I can't say I know for certain…" Watari said, examining the approaching horror with a mildly inquisitive air. He raised one of the Beretta's and turned it from side to side as though only just noticing that he was in fact in possession of it. "Guess I'll just blow him away."

Scandalized that he would take such a casual air whence concerning the life of a mortal, I reached over and pushed the barrel of the Berretta downward, shooting Watari a clearly censorious look.

"Have you no decency? This is the compromised soul of a _mortal_ we're talking about here! We can't just bust a cap in his crown!" I took a moment to consider my words. "But then again, this is _you _we're talking about. I do suppose there's an equally good chance you would hit his leg instead."

Watari tried to look dignified, though I estimated from his expression that he might have just entertained the passing fancy of turning the gun on me instead.

"Well, we don't have much time to dally. Our main suspect is getting away!"

_CRASH!_

I whirled back to face our newest assailant, saw books and chunks of wood fly into the air and rain down over our heads. The Librarian had just smashed the steel capped book through one of the support shelves to my right, cleaving the wood in half as effectively as an axe. He continued towards us, swinging the bizarre weapon with aplomb, his red veined eyes glaring with deranged glee.

Watari targeted the book and fired three times, not a one of the bullets finding its' mark. The librarian was simply swinging it too quickly. Forgoing my initial reluctance, I readied the pistol and aimed for the contorted mans' leg, firing one succinct shot, puncturing the skin directly through his knee –

- and he didn't even slow down.

"Move!" I spluttered, realizing in the second before the librarians arm swung forwards that he was now right on top of us. I leapt backwards, spinning in three hundred and sixty degrees so that I could untangle the leather shoulder holster that kept the rifle sanctioned to my body. Watari however didn't respond so quickly and took almost the entire brunt of the books steel corner against the side of his face. His cheek opened up in a wide semi-circle, blood spitting from the glaring wound as he ducked to avoid the return swing, slamming his foot into the librarian's solar plexus, causing him to stumble backwards at least two steps.

"Insolent brats!" The creature once known as Hiro roared, as Watari reverse bunny hopped, absently clutching at the wound on his face. "I'll teach you! I'll teach you better you… rotten pests!"

I shot a pellet of restrained _mana _at the Librarian, catching him in the shoulder. He bucked briefly beneath the blow and then suddenly charged at me, drawing the blood stained book back–

- and as I dove out of the way, the Librarian swept past me in a running crouch, bringing the book up as if throwing a ball underarm. The steel corner gouged the carpet, ripping through it as though it were no more solid than water.

As soon as the deranged creature was past, he stopped running, turning almost casually back to watch me stumble to my feet and fire again.

My secondary burst of restrained _mana _ploughed into the Librarian's stomach. Again, he reeled back and responded by turning back almost instantaneously and screaming with unrestrained fever. He had finally dispensed with the name calling and had apparently concluded that we were no longer fit to be bludgeoned by a book. He cast the volume aside and I watched with eyes that must have widened cartoonishly, as the Librarian's unbound arm suddenly stretched outwards, forming into a cluster of thick, dragging claws, the palm itself becoming as solid and round as destruction ball. I exchanged a sidelong glance with Watari, who seemed quite ready to soil himself.

"O…kay…" I said at last, eying off that malformed hand with great apprehension. "Things just got a little more difficult…"

Watari raised one of the Beretta's, holding his free hand palm out. "Sir! This is our final warning! Stop now, or I shoot!"

The Librarian leered and went running towards him. I stepped sideways, giving myself room to maneuver, preparing to fire off an unrestrained _mana _blight –

- and heard a rattling moan behind me, a fresh wave of rancid coppery scent assaulting my

senses. I spun, the realization hitting me even before I saw it.

The decrepit zombie was only a few feet away, reaching for me, bits of its' guts hanging like dried jerky from the thick puncture holes in its' belly. It was the woman I had seen from the receptionist area, the one that had been impaled upon the points of the chandelier. Somehow, she had made the jump across and back onto the 1st floor. Her eyes glowed malevolently and that strange, lilting language came hurtling from between her lips, finally awakening my recognition.

_It was a demonic language! _

These people were not true zombies, not as you might understand them. In the absence of their souls, the bodies had been inhabited by lower level demons, thus explaining the aggressive behavior and the glowing unnatural light of their eyes. I had just long enough to congratulate myself on being so clever before the impaled woman came shrieking towards me. I ducked out of the way, feeling her dried fingers graze across my face, as I jabbed my foot backwards, knocking her sideways onto the floor. It was unfortunate but there was nothing to be done in this particular situation. The bodies were already vacated of their rightful owners and to allow these lower level Underdwellers to assume form was a violation of the natural order. The most effective means through which to disable the bodies, thus making them useless as potential hosts, was to destroy the brains. This prevented the cerebral cortex from sending messages to the rest of the body. It may have been a stereotype of every zombie horror movie on the market but Hollywood got it right some of the time.

I pressed my two fingers together and focused on an elimination blight, releasing the contained friction as the woman came lunging back at me, her arms flailing at her sides like the wayward limbs of a scarecrow. The purple tinged _mana _disintegrated the puckered nose of the creature, fluid and soft matter spraying the floor beneath her. With an exhalation of foul smelling air, the once-woman slumped backwards into the expelled gore that had once been inside of her own skull.

I felt a flush of regret but had no time to indulge in it. Watari had so far managed to dodge most of the Librarian's attacks and he had fired off a few shots here and there to no apparent effect. The raging man sported several ragged holes; one through his upper arm, another through his thigh and a third had torn away part of his left ear. Not a one of them bled however and he continued to rush at the scientist as though he felt no pain. It started to run at Watari again, dropping its' terrible, inhuman hand down as it went for him – just as the blonds Beretta clicked on empty.

Watari cursed and sprinted away, but the charging monstrosity veered with him –

- and its' sweeping claw glanced against his side, tumbling him to the ground.

"Watari!"

I raced towards the delirious creature, hurling handfuls of fully charged blights into its' back as it bent down over the fallen Shinigami. Watari was scrambling backwards, his shirt shredded, his eyes wide with terror.

"Run!" I screamed at him but he was beyond comprehension, fumbling to remove the second Beretta from the holster of his hip and sending ammunition rolling across the floor in his efforts. I picked up the Carbon rifle, long since abandoned and started firing into the distorted Librarian's back. Tiny black holes appeared through the distorted man's striped shirt and I watched with some revulsion as shiny, gore encrusted tentacles ripped free from his shoulders and whipped around his upper body as though outraged, coiling and uncoiling with incredible speed. He reached out with his normal hand and covered Watari's entire face, trying to lift the struggling Shinigami off of his feet. Watari however had finally managed to loose his additional gun and he swung it about, firing an uncalculated shot into the man's cheek, disintegrating half of his face. The skin beneath the once tanned flesh throbbed and writhed, the tips of smaller tentacles emerging to trail down along his arm and up towards Watari's face, who moaned in revulsion when he felt their touch. I spent the clip in the rifle and groaned in disgust as it clicked aggravatingly at me. Frustrated and terrified, I did a tremendously stupid thing; a thing, which never works in the movies but nonetheless, offers the audience a brief moment of comedic enlightenment.

I hurled the gun at the monstrosity.

The thick metal body of the rifle smacked the Librarian in the back of his head. And despite the fact that thirty or so bullets fired directly into his face and back had not made a difference, this above all else seemed to truly irritate him. He dropped Watari, who gasped desperately for air as he stumbled backwards into the shelf behind him and turned slowly towards me. One of his eyes had been completely obliterated, the brown of his iris dripping down the skinned portion of his face like melted chocolate. With the eye that remained, he glanced down at the rifle and then back at me.

"How many times must I tell you impertinent little monsters? DON'T THROW THINGS IN THE LIBRARY!!"

He kicked the rifle, so hard and fast that I hadn't the time to avoid it. It slammed hard into my left pectoral, causing me to emit an involuntarily grunt as I staggered backwards, tripping over the bookcase that had previously attempted to squash me. The Librarian was coming for me again, the claws of his deformed arm dragging upon the ground, the tentacles erupting from his shoulders writhing through the air like eels wending through the water. I rolled backwards off of the shelf, grabbing books as my hands fell upon them and pegging them at the approaching horror. Pieces of tooth fell from his mouth and bounced off of the carpet in a splatter of red and white. The Librarian didn't seem to notice as he started to run towards me at incredible speed –

"STOP THROWING THOSE! I HAD THEM ALL STACKED IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER!" He bellowed, bloodied spittle spraying outward from his lips as he came crashing through the shelf.

Watari was firing, shouting, throwing books to try and turn his attention away from me but he was already fixated, pounding towards me with single minded intent and drawing his claw back –

_- wait for it…_

I dove to the side at the last possible second and the monster went flying past, its' claw mulching through the wood of the shelf before which I had just been standing. My hand slid out of my pocket, pulling out yet another _fuda _slip and inscribing a line of spell scripture onto it. Having satisfactorily imbued the parchment, I flung it towards the Librarian as he slowly turned to face me again, gratified to see the slip attach itself firmly to the wall of his shirt. "_Spirit Web!_"

With an oddly high pitched squeal, the bound librarian was flung sideways as though violently thrown by an invisible force and was affixed to the left hand book shelf by rapidly constructed white, metaphysical threads.

Not giving myself time to appraise my handiwork, I ran over to Watari, who quickly climbed to his feet and threw his arms around me.

"Oh God that hurt _so_ _much_. I thought that thing was gonna have your head as well as mine, mate." He drew back from me, eyes downcast as though ashamed. "Geez, I'm sorry… I really couldn't do much, could I?" He offered me an embarrassed smile and I truly loved him for it.

"You did great." I assured him, looking back over my shoulder just to make sure that the Spirit Web was satisfactorily holding. "Shit, when he had you by the face… I thought that was it right there. Thought he'd pop your skull like a zit."

"Hell, ain't nothing." The blond scientist insisted, leaning back against one of the shelves in order to catch his breath. I took a moment to catalogue his injuries; a healing cut on his cheek, blood seeping down his thigh, the top several layers of skin sliced neatly away by the Librarian's brutal swipe. There were also bloodied half moon indentations on either side of his face, where the creatures' fingernails had penetrated his flesh but these were already closing over. I gestured to the wound in Watari's side. It continued to bleed quite freely.

"Can you walk with that?"

Watari bit his lip, fishing a hand into his side pack and removing a small sachet of antiseptic hand towels, which he used to gingerly wash the edges of the wound. Deep cuts took a little longer to close over and it was best to clean them beforehand, to avoid infections and the like.

"The pain's bearable. The knowledge of what'll happen if we don't catch up with the perp _isn't_." He looked me over briefly. "You hurt?"

I shook my head. "Came pretty close but no. Just a few bumps and bruises here and there. Shall we get moving?"

"Hell yeah." Watari hollowly intoned, walking over to retrieve the guns. He handed the carbon rifle back to me, smirking as I clumsily reloaded the magazine. "And _not _that it wasn't effective and all but… for future reference, I wouldn't recommend hurling your gun at a baddie in a childish fit. You might wish you'd kept it instead."

I smiled as I slung the leather strap back over my shoulder. "Sorry… I'm just not sure I'll ever be comfortable with these things. I'm a Shinigami. I work with magic. It's what I do."

"Indeed." Watari said, beaming at my handiwork approvingly as we brushed past the temporarily bound Librarian. "That was a nice call, Tsuzuki. What made you think of using a spirit web?"

I shrugged in what I thought to be a modest fashion. "This guy reminded me of a similar case I'd had years ago… if ya can't beat 'em-"

"- bind 'em_._" Watari said with an ironic smile. This I'm sure doesn't make much sense to you at this stage but I'm sure Watari will be happy to fill you in when it is his chance to talk. As it is, we bypassed our now contrite captive and the blond took it upon himself to distribute a condescending pat upon the Librarian's contorted hand through the _mana _constructed web. "Now, you just be a nice friendly batshit librarian and hang about here 'til we get back, eh?"

The bound librarian gave a persuasive struggle in response to Watari's touch, his furious screams echoing throughout the vacated library, which seemed suddenly crypt like to me. "Filthy wretches! Causing such a din in the library! This won't go unpunished! Ooh yes… you'll be sure to pay…"

"Yes, yes…" Watari mused, clearly having taken not a word of it in. We examined the shelf to which Sakamoto Hiro had been addressing before his incensed attack and found there was actually a narrow alcove between both it and the wall. Part of the carpet had been pulled away, revealing a gaping hole in the floorboards, and a dark tunnel that seemed to lead down through a supportive beam of the ground floor and even further besides. There was a rather dank musty smell filtering up from the hole itself and the darkness below was completely impenetrable.

"Looks like he's gone down into the basement area." Watari suggested as he knelt down to inspect the hole. "There's a cool draft… it may lead elsewhere…"

I fancied the thought of dropping down into the hole as much as I would have fancied the prospect of chewing on rat droppings. I looked about, actively ignoring the continuing shrieks of the bound librarian and noticed a small book that had fallen off of the shelf. Picking it up, I turned back to the jagged hole and dropped the book into it, (_"Destruction of property! Why, you little vandals!")_ listening intently for anything that it might have struck on the way down. I heard a not so distant thud, indicating that it had in fact successfully reached the bottom. This was good enough for me. "Well? Let's get going."

"Hold on a tic." Watari said, reaching out to grab my arm lest I plunge into the hole a little overzealously. "Shouldn't we wait for backup?"

I worried at my bottom lip, knowing that this was the most responsible course of action but more concerned that this delay would have given the suspect time to escape. "That hooded figure could get away in the time it takes for them to get here. We don't have that luxury, Watari."

Watari mused on this for a moment and begrudgingly nodded. "Mmm… yeah, you got a point." He climbed to his feet, swung his arms to and fro as though preparing to jump off of a diving board. "Well then… look out below!" And with this, he plunged feet first into the hole, much to my great amusement.

"Man, he didn't even look first…" I took a deep breath and followed behind him. It was rather a tight squeeze and my shoulders scraped the insides of the beam once or twice but all and all, the distance was such that even a normal human being might have possibly made it. The tunnel widened suddenly around me as I broke through into the area below and I tensed my muscles, in anticipation as the carpeted floor rushed up to met me. I landed nimbly in a crouching position, having only managed to avoid hitting Watari, who in contrast was forced to drag himself up off of his butt. I glanced around the downstairs area as I waited for him to dust the seat of his pants off.

That was when I first saw the boy.

He was sitting crouched beside a dusty wall heater beside the stairwell, leading into the basement, indolently examining his fingers. His dark black hair was chin length and disheveled, his eye line diverted so I was unable to scrutinize his facial features. He was wearing shorts and a green shirt, his bare arms and legs prickling with visible gooseflesh. I frowned as my eyes fell upon him.

"Huh…?"

The boy, much shorter and skinnier than the figure upstairs, cocked his head as he examined me in return. He seemed vaguely familiar to me somehow, though I couldn't quite place him.

"… Excuse me, little boy?" I made my way towards him, trying not to make myself appear too threatening in case he was traumatized by what had occurred in the rooms above. "Do you work here…? You shouldn't be down here right now… there's been something of an incident. You need to go."

The boy giggled a little, as though he thought me touched in the head before turning about and disappearing through the wall behind him. I'll admit, that one stumped me.

"What the - ?!" I blinked, rubbed my eyes and then examined the wall again, wondering if what I had just seen was real or whether I'd just experienced another of those vivid hallucinations. The Soul Shelter should have been preventing those from occurring. "That… that boy… it… couldn't have been - !"

"Hey Tsuzuki… who ya talking to?" Watari asked, having finally managed to remedy the constitution of his trousers. I looked over at him.

"You… you didn't see…" I glanced back towards the wall and decided that I must have banged my head when I'd stumbled backwards over the bookshelf. My brain was no doubt a little rattled. I shrugged, bemused but blatantly refusing to stipulate on it. "… guess I imagined it."

Watari cocked his head to the side, looking all too much like 003 in doing so. "Imagined what?"

"Don't worry…" I said, shaking my head and gesturing for us to proceed forwards. "Let's push on."

We made our way out of the corner alcove and entered what appeared to be the basement corridor. A number of doors ran up either side of the hall, the area dimly lit by modernized wall ensconces that had none of the charm of their old fashioned compatriots upstairs. I understood that most of the rare volumes were stored in this area and public access was greatly restricted. Despite the circumstances I couldn't help but feel a little guilty about dropping through the floor from above with such a blatant show of decorum. I won't pretend it was an entirely reasonable thought but it still somehow felt as though Watari and I were trespassing upon grounds in which we were not only unwelcome guests but ill-mannered invaders.

"There's quite a few doors down here…" Watari mused, clucking his tongue thoughtfully as his eyes roved up and down the hall. "Should we split up?"

I bit my lip disapprovingly but couldn't fathom any other means through which we might find the suspect before they escaped. "I don't much like the idea but I don't think we got a choice."

Watari winked assuredly at me as he replaced the spent capsules within the gun's chamber. "Don't you worry, I'll keep my wits about me." He chose to ignore my less than reassured look and pointed up the hallway. "I'll take the right hand side, you take the left. Sound agreeable?"

"Yeah, seems fair." I gently tapped Watari in the arm, making sure he made eye contact with me so that my concern for his welfare was not missed. "Be careful."

I turned towards the left hand wall and with the carbon rifle raised to a defensive stance, entered the first door on my side, Watari mirroring my movements almost exactly to the first door on the right. According to the mounted sign inside of the doorway, it seemed that I had entered into the rare books room for historic volumes. I'd moved no more than ten or so feet when I came across another two corpses slumped between the isles. Both were gaunt, just like those upstairs, fingers curled up over their chests as though warding back whatever had been threatening them. With a sad, reposed sigh, I checked the room from top to bottom before heading back towards the door, stopping when I caught what sounded distinctively like whispery sigh from behind me. I felt my heartbeat accelerate, causing my face and armpits to prickle as blood flowed out of them. I slowly turned, nerve endings tickling with anticipation and saw from the corner of my eye, the fingers of the nearest corpse clench slowly inwards towards the palm.

One of the drained people was still alive!

"Uhh… urgh…" Came the breathless moan again. I hastily scanned the body with my Sixth Sense penetration and picked up a distinctively human aura, which meant that this was not a possessed host such as those we had encountered upstairs. I hastened to her side and knelt down, feeling a sickening weight drop into my stomach at the sight of her blinded eyes rolling about in the insubstantial recesses of their sockets.

"Oh god… you're still alive." I whispered, trying to speak soothingly, less I cause her additional duress. Though, in her condition, what could possibly anguish her furthermore? I gently clasped her hand, exerting little pressure against the dried flesh and bone, fearing I might inadvertently shatter her fingers without meaning too. "Sweetheart, you gotta hang in there. I'll call for the paramedics."

The woman's lips barely moved, her physical strength naturally diminished but still she managed to speak in a voice so thick and croaky, she sounded much to me like a long sustained smoker.

"That boy… he was always so quiet… why would he do this… to us…?"

"Please, save your strength." I urged, forcing back tears I could feel threatening to fall. Calm though I tried to remain, assurances though I could give her, it was clear to one as experienced in the affairs of death such as myself that the condition of this deteriorated woman could not be remedied. And yet despite my experience in such matters, my heart still felt as though it might break for the inquiries it was essential to make of her, in these, her final few precious seconds of life. "That boy…?"

The woman was wheezing, the skin of her fingers flaking, as they rubbed against my own, her lips cracked but not bleeding. There was no blood beneath her flesh and yet somehow, she was not yet absent from the form. "He said… that he liked being here… he was always smiling… seemed so happy… who would have thought…?" She coughed miserably, a dust like substance billowing about my face as it was forcefully expelled from her lungs in the action. "Please… stop… him… before anyone else…" Her voice trailed off into a dried, almost artificial sounding rattle, as though someone were running a drumstick down an iron washboard. Her eyes acquired the familiar glassy sheen of the vacant and what tiny strength remained in her fingers disappeared entirely.

"No! Please, hold on!" I begged, knowing even as I did that it was pointless but somehow, _always_, still hoping to prove otherwise. "I'll get you some help, you just gotta hang in there!"

Silence was my only reply and my sixth sense perception registered the departing of her spirit.

"Ma'am! _MA'AM!_" There was a splintering sound and I looked down in her horror to see the poor woman's hand suddenly shatter between my own, the last trace of life leaving her. I jumped back to my feet, anxiously slapping my palm against the knee of my trousers until the last of the dried flesh had fallen away. My face felt strained from the overwrought expression I was sure it conveyed. "We were too late…" I stifled a sob, holding a hand over my face for a moment until I managed to get control. "That bastard…" I hissed, my hand shaking from side to side in a mixture of pity for the horrendous fate of these innocent people and fury for the unknown demon that had subjected them it. "I'll make sure he pays for this!"

I took one last look about the room but found nothing worthy of attention and so I took my leave with a heart burdened by an all too familiar sadness. I cautiously entered the second door on the left hand wall and immediately caught sight of someone ducking behind one of the towering bookshelves as soon as my head had poked around the corner. I leveled the rifle and edged my careful way about the shelf, bringing it out and aiming fast when I saw someone standing down the isle between shelves. It turned out to be an elderly man, who was in the midst of filing some of the volumes away. He gasped in surprise and raised his hands in response to my pointing of the automatic weapon in his immediate direction. I took this to be smart thinking on his part.

"Oh dear Lord!" He cried, face visibly reddening and the veins in his neck extending to a dangerous degree. "What do you want? There's no money down here!"

I sighed in relief, immediately lowering my weapon. This was not the same figure we had seen upstairs, nor was he some kind of minion serving in its' stead. Clearly, this was one of the library attendants and he sounded refreshingly lucid. "Mister, I do apologize. I'm with the Special Investigations unit."

The elderly gentleman hesitantly lowered his hands, surveying me with a skeptical rising of his brow. "The SIT…? Forgive me for saying so but this is the last place I would have expected to find an agent of the Metropolitan police… is something the matter?"

Upon closer inspection I noticed the hearing aid set into place within the attendants left ear, which answered my unspoken query concerning how he could have missed the all out massacre that had occurred upstairs. I spent an indecent amount of time trying to find the better means through which to inform him as to the reality of this; his current situation. "I don't mean to alarm you but there's been something of an incident. I'll have to ask you to evacuate."

"An 'incident'?" The old man asked, looking predictably alarmed. He took a step forwards, seeming to test my boundaries and having assured himself that this was permitted, preceded to approach me at a hastened rate. "Young man, I'm not trying to be uncooperative here but I can't leave until I'm sure the rest of the staff are safe."

I had no real means of answering this honestly. The best I could do was to provide this gentleman with the details concerning the one staff member I was reasonably certain had survived the onslaught. "Kohaku-san is being tended to by the paramedics at the front of the building. I can't divulge any of the details at this moment but I really must insist that you leave immediately." I offered him what I hope was a reassuring look but I think it was rather desperately imploring if anything. "If I come across anyone else I'll make sure they are seen to safety."

The older man seemed glad to hear this and nodded to me. "Well all right then. I'd best go and see to Kohaku-san. Thankyou officer." He offered me a brief bow before rushing past me and back out into the hallway beyond. I was about to continue my inspection of the room, when I heard a very high-pitched scream from outside that abruptly terminated into a strangled, gurgling sound.

"Oh no…" I pivoted on my heel and rushed back out through the door, to find the elderly man curled on the floor like an asphyxiated spider. He had been completely drained. "Sir…?" I checked his pulse, the flesh of my forearms rippling with goose pimples at the very touch of his still warm, yet utterly dry, flaked skin. "It's no good… he's gone…" I cupped that self same hand over my mouth, attempting to suppress his emotions less I cry out loud. "In a matter of seconds… oh god… why couldn't I have done anything? What sort of power _is _this?!"

My thoughts were viciously serrated through as another scream erupted from the room across the hall. I jumped to my feet and rushed inside to find Watari, standing alongside another similarly disfigured corpse, clutching a hand to his chest and eyes squeezed shut, possessing an expression that suggested he was utterly frustrated with himself.

"What is it?! Why did you scream?" I asked, feeling panic ebb out of me slowly. Judging from the look on his face, I gathered he had been the one to frighten himself and was embarrassed by it.

"It's nothing…" He sighed back irritably. "I was just looking for the light switch and I stumbled into the chair this fella was sitting on and he landed on my feet." He gestured to the corpse, whose mouth was notably twisted sideways into an eternally prolonged scream. "I heard somebody else yell out there a moment ago… was that you?"

It was nice that he bothered to come and check on me now wasn't it? I shook my head, moving the corpse aside so that I could right the chair. We were in some sort of newspaper storage area, judging by the desk arrangement and the piles of paperwork and book receipts scattered about the place. A tacky seventies style lamp beamed light across the desk in a golden half circle pattern. There was an old fashioned black telephone on the wall, a coat rack and a file cabinet but other than that the room was almost entirely bare. Not that it was small either, so I found it a rather flagrant waste of space.

"No… there was a survivor" I said, answering Watari's earlier question. "… someone who for whatever reason hadn't been affected. I told him to evacuate but as soon as he left the room…" I bitterly indicated the corpse on the floor.

"Don't blame yourself, Tsuzuki." Watari said, his eyes creasing downwards sympathetically. "How could you have possibly predicted something like that?"

"It doesn't make it any easier…" I murmured, looking aside at the body of what had once been a young woman in perhaps her late twenties. Was her husband or partner outside right now, desperate to hear some news as to whether or not she was still alive? Did she have children, crying because their Mother wouldn't be coming home? The air in front of me broke apart like rain on stained glass as once again I found myself ever so close to succumbing to tears. Watari stepped over the corpse and put his arms around me. I felt my chin quiver childishly as I attempted to regain control of my emotions and failed abysmally.

"I know…" He said soothingly, slender hands running up and down my back. "But we can't get weighed down with our own feelings right now. We got a job to do…" He leaned back, giving my cheek a little cuff on the way. "Hey… I'll buy ya a beer later."

I smiled, though it felt unnatural and forced. "That's the first good news I've heard all day."

We both shrieked in hysterical unison when the phone on the newspaper room bench started to ring. We glanced back and forth between one another before I finally plucked up my courage and answered it.

"Yes?"

To my surprise, I heard the voice of our boss, Chief Konoe on the other line. "I was beginning to think we wouldn't reach you. Chikawa's been having difficulty getting through on the telecom… some sort of interference… Anyway, I'm on my way to your location right now. Backup should be along shortly. What's the update on the situation?"

I felt my spine unintentionally straighten in accordance to the respectful posture I always enforced when addressing my boss. Not that he was about to see it but there's no explaining an unconscious, reinforced action anymore than you can explain why people sink so slowly in quicksand. "Watari and I are trailing the suspect… he seems to be absorbing human energy at a phenomenal rate. The people in this library have been sucked drier than three-year-old beef jerky. The level of _mana _radiation is high. A number of corpses have been reanimated and one in particular has been distorted to a phenomenal degree. I heard several of the revived corpses speaking in a demonic language, so I believe that a number of low level Underdwellers are taking advantage of the vacated bodies and setting up shop, so to speak."

Chief Konoe took a moment to absorb this. "I see… it isn't so unusual for an Underdweller to devour human souls in order to enhance its' own power but this is normally done through manipulation and gradual persuasion." He paused, apparently stipulating upon this point further but coming up with no satisfactory conclusion. "Whoever this Underdweller is, we can only assume its' of considerable power. Proceed with the utmost caution, you two. But be sure to detain that suspect!"

"Roger." I said, smirking a little as Watari saluted in a blithe manner. "We'll see you soon." I hung up the phone and then turned to face Watari, meaning to fill him in on what parts of the conversation he had not overheard. "Backup should be arriving shortly. The Chief's on his way over too."

"That's some boss we've got. I keep forgetting we're lucky like that." Watari said with a fond smile. He visibly straightened up and I smiled for hearing every bone in his back crack as a result of it. He had rather bad posture Watari, so this popping procedure was something I was quite familiar with. It was really something to hear of a morning, when just about every single joint in his body would pop into place with a sound not dissimilar to an expostulating pinball machine.

"Well?" He queried, looking at me like an expectant child on a mildly interesting day trip. I nodded in concurrence.

"Let's get going… hmm?" My attention was waylaid in having noticed something clutched in one of the corpses wasted hands. "What's this…?" I pried the brittle fingers apart to see something gold winking up at me in the dim light. I picked it up. "A key…?" There was a little metal tag attached to the key that simply read 'All Access'.

Watari tilted his head sideways to read this and emitted a small putting noise from between his lips. "Guess we don't have to worry about locked doors anymore, ne?" He appropriated the key from my loosened hand and ignoring my protests, left the room with it held high. I followed him, casting one final lingering look about the newspaper dens but there wasn't anything to be found, least of all a hooded apparition.

_**~ EC ~**_

**A/N: Thanks as always to Jollyolly and TurboFerret for their betta-reading! Hope you guys enjoyed this disgusting chapter! Part five along soon, please R and R in the meantime and don't forget to always check your closet! **


	5. Melancholic Confines

**Dark Adaptation – Dead Men Working.**

**DISCLAIMER: **Yami no Matseui and its' affiliated characters, concepts and locations belong to Yoko Matsushita and I am earning nothing but the sole satisfaction of telling this story to you fine people.

**A/N: **Some disturbing imagery in this chapter but nothing too extreme. Thanks as always to my readers and my reviewers; I always appreciate your support! Thanks especially to those anonymous reviewers whom I cannot reply to personally but whom I'll acknowledge here:

**WorkingClass: **Glad you found the background info interesting. I was expanding on what was already provided by Yoko Matsushita, who created simply a wonderful world to explore and develop. There were a number of things left unanswered in the series however and this was merely my way of trying to answer a few of those conundrums. Thankyou for your support and I'm glad you are enjoying the work!

**Firiat: **I also agree that it was a little odd that a psychiatrist never makes an appearance in Yami. I mean, a workplace full of dead people, working with tragedy day after day after day... surely there are a lot of issues to be dealt with! Oh well, at least Tsuzuki finally got to talk to someone about his feelings. Even if his interpretations of the inkblots was really messed up! Oh, and when I was mentioning Tsuzuki's physical age, I am actually aware that he is supposed to look as though he hasn't aged more than 18 years or so but I didn't agree with that at all. I thought he did actually look as though he were in his early twenties. (But he had a baby face). And it's a personal preference thing too, I suppose. I don't find teenagers appealing in writing and I think that trying to pass Tsuzuki off as looking perpetually pubescent is cheapening the appeal of grown men. So... I made him look a little older but without making him appear his actual age. Just letting you know that I wasn't remiss of that, it was just a personal issue! XD Thanks for a great review and I hope that you continue to enjoy the story!

**Anonymous: **Cheers, I'm glad I haven't disappointed with this story! Good to see you are enjoying it! Thankyou for your kind words of praise and I hope you continue to enjoy the updated chapters as they trundle along!

**Kitkat: **Are those fingernails still attached? Try not to chew on them too vorociously now, dearie! XD Thanks for the support, I'm happy to see you are enjoying the brand of Tsuzuki I bring to the Yami no Matsuei world of fanfiction. I'm actually a little surprised to find that you have read this work before being familiar with Dark Adaptation... Ah well, I guess it's nice that now you have enjoyed this work you have 31 more chapters of the related story to go onto when this one is finished! I'm very happy to be sharing my writing with you. It makes it worthwhile when I see that kind persons such as yourself are enjoying the work so much and getting real pleasure out of connecting with the characters and becoming involved in the story through them. Try to pace yourself with the reading my dear. Drink plenty of coffee and try to get some sleep here and there. All the chapters of DA are huge, just like this piece so it'll probably take some time to get through them all. Don't chew those nails down to the quick! And thankyou for the lovely reviews, I hope you enjoy the new chapter!

**~ X ~**

_"__Nor crown nor coin can halt times flight_

_Or stay the armies of the night_

_King and villein, lad and lass,_

_All answer to the hourglass__..."_

_**~ Unknown**_

**~ X ~**

**Melancholic Confine's **

**Tsuzuki**

We checked out a few of the other rooms but found nothing but more of the same. Upon entering the last room in the hall, which looked to be storage space, we immediately saw the hooded boy lying on his back upon the floor, his body contorted into an odd snake like position. I gestured for Watari to approach and we did so with deliberate hesitance, weapons drawn but angled downward. He had not yet observed our presence and this was preferable until we found an advantage point. The boy was writhing from side to side, as though his limbs were bound by invisible bonds at the joints. His head thrashed madly and he gabbled unintelligibly to himself, making neither rhyme nor reason that I could comprehend.

"I'm… who… _I'm_ _me_… I'm myself… I am him… _he_ _is_ _me_…we are one but we are two…" His eyes darted about madly, taking into account things that were of significance to no one but himself. It was as though he were observing the flight path of swarming insects, moving about his head with reckless disregard. "One hand beckons to the light… the other ushers in the darkness… who are you…"

Watari and I stepped into the light cast by the overhanging bulb above what looked like a stage area, for library productions or some such thing. We raised our weapons together and aimed them at the writhing boy. I could hear blood pounding in my ears, like war drums echoing in the distance. Seething fury for what this entity had done to the souls of the Tachiagari that night very nearly ensconced my senses but I forced myself to remain calm and act in a rational manner, befitting a Shinigami.

"Underdweller, for the taking of human life we, the Shinigami have come for your soul." There was a hint of cold, familiar recital to my voice. I had made this speech many times and I thought it rather corny but it was standard procedure. It was really no different than a cop reading a wayward individual their Miranda Rights.

The boy's head twisted unnaturally towards me. The shadows continued to steal across his features but now his eyes, wide and ice blue were revealed to me and they continued to roll about, unfocused upon anything tangible. "I am… I am… I am…" Those eyes then bulged unnaturally and his entire body sweltered as a red snake like symbol cut across his flesh. I recoiled, as steam rose off of these marks, as though the boy were being branded before our very eyes. There was a strong scent of burning hair and flesh permeating the air. "… I am… the 'END'!" The boy screamed hysterically as his body starting to spasm wildly. "No! I can't… you won't!!" A different version of his own voice, deeper and somehow more authoritative, took over. "STOP DAMAGING THE BODY!!" He thrashed from side to side, chest heaving and spine arching to form an almost perfect half circle shape in alignment with the floor. " I'll kill it!! I'll kill the vessel! I won't let you…!!" And now the voice became suddenly childlike. "No, don't! I'm afraid!" Again the voice changed, deepening to a sinister degree. "You can't… you mustn't! I won't allow it! Every cell belongs to me… with every breath I grow stronger and your resolve weakens. Dominion is soon at hand, your erstwhile resistance shall come to its' end, once and for all!" An agonizing scream ripped through the boys' body as though his skin was being slowly peeled from the bones and I fought the instinctive urge to smother the dangerously high pitch by bringing my hands up to my ears. "HELP ME, _PLEASE_!!

"Tsuzuki… what's going on?" Watari asked, eyes never straying so far as a hairs width from the boys' twisted visage. I don't suppose he really expected me to answer; after all, if he didn't have a clue, I sure as Hell didn't. It was simply a means of distracting ourselves from the unfamiliar horror playing out before us. The way the boy thrashed… it reminded me all too greatly of the sorrowful character's in the Western film _Jacob's Ladder_. How the skull rolled and bucked and quaked upon the neck, as if the spine had cleanly serrated and allowed no constriction to these unfathomable movements… The mind verily boggles, even to those of us whom you would think long accustomed to such abnormalities.

"… I don't know…" I confessed, unable to convey my thoughts on the subject in a neat, comprehensive package that was somehow relevant. "It sounds like… when I tried to resist Saagatanasu." My eyes widened of their own accord because it suddenly, unexpectedly made perfect sense to me. The internal struggle as the host revolted against the invading organism… the demon. "But you know… I don't hear only two voices fighting. There's more than just the repressed host and the Underdweller… that's what I think. And they're all fighting one another… his entire body is at war with itself… and the vessel is starting to crack."

I jumped back in fright and Watari made a nervous tittering sound as the boy suddenly lunged to his feet, foregoing the physical struggle of pushing himself aloft and instead nominating to impossibly swing upward like a drawbridge pulled into a vertical position by winding chains. He came towards us, gesturing wildly with hands speckled by drops of blood, from where the boys' fingernails had pierced the flesh of his palms in several places.

"At last… look Shinigami!" He screamed in triumph. "The time has come… for all whom have suffered to be released from their shackles!"

My patience had been whittled to a barely discernible vapor and I conveyed this in so few words by aiming the barrel of my gun directly at the boys' hooded forehead. "_No. _The time has come for _you _come willingly into _your_ shackles, Underdweller. If you still insist on being a smarmy chatterbox, we shall have no other choice than to resort to more forceful means to earn your compliance."

I saw those slender lips hitch upwards at the side, as though the boy were barely repressing an overwhelming urge to laugh. However, he came no closer and simply swayed on the spot, surveying me with what I took to be something of a meditative posture.

"It seems as though you still need some time, boy… until your darkness has returned to you."

I all but screamed in ever mounting frustration, dropping the rifle as purple enflamed _mana _flared up from between my fingers. I had to actually snuff it out before any damage was caused but it wasn't easy. I was tired of using a weapon I didn't understand. All I wanted was to make this irritating whelp go away, using the natural weapons of my body. Those abilities I had been born with and shunned for. "Not this again!" I pointed my finger at him boldly; a finger still enshrined by intangible flame. "Why do you speak of darkness as though it's something I should understand? If I want nonsense babbled at me, I'd cast an illogicality blight on your sorry ass and since I'm not, you should take it for granted that all I want to hear out of you is a cogent, logical explanation!"

The boy did not respond immediately to me but moments later, raised his head so that one blue eye shone out from under the dark overhang of the hood and met my own. The sharp ringing that had cut through my head upstairs returned in full force, accompanied by a scene that played before my minds eye. I saw, from the point of view of an unknown observer, a hospital bed with an unfamiliar occupant. Reclining beneath sheets so white my true eyes would have hurt to gaze upon it, the sickened figure stirred slightly, one eye blankly staring into nothingness, the other eternally closed to all external images, covered by a wide swab and bandages…

"_Where is this…?_" I questioned, though to whom I can't say I'm sure."_Is that… is that the boy I saw…? … No, it's…_"

A man in a white coat appeared before the bed, sucking on the end of a pencil before then using it to jot down a note upon the clipboard he was carrying.

"… _A doctor…?_" Whiteness dominated my senses just as darkness had when we had first entered the library and I could no longer discern what else might have been happening within the hospital room. The vision faded into the light, bringing the dim, hard-edged clarity of the Waking World back into focus. "_No! Wait!_"

"OI!" Watari's sharp, twangy accent vanquished the last of the white glare from my eyes and my cheek stung from where he had apparently slapped me. "You still with me?"

Slowly coming to my senses, I found myself kneeling upon the floor, looking up at Watari who was staring at me with a concerned expression. The boys words continued to ring in my ear however, just as surely as that hospital room remained imprinted upon my mind like the vivid ink of a fresh tattoo.

"The darkness… returned to me…?" I pondered, eyes prickling with tiny hints of white as I looked down upon the floor. Watari huffed indignantly, seemingly annoyed.

"What the heck are you blabbing about? While you were out of it, our new friend made a run for."

I followed the line of his arm as it extended upwards towards the ceiling, showing a large gaping hole in the woodwork. I felt a drop of sweat roll down the side of my face, physical proof of the intense exasperation I felt.

"Really… can't he use a door like a normal person?" I muttered, climbing to my feet and brushing off my knees. I don't believe the props area had received a thorough cleaning in the past few months. The dust was at least an inch thick.

Watari picked up my rifle and tossed it to me. I caught it one handed and holstered it. "If he's back upstairs now, there's a good chance the backup could head him off. But I don't think I wanna risk it."

"Talk about overtime!" I groaned, following Watari as he leapt off of the stage and displaced _mana _energy beneath his feet in order to propel himself up through the hole. We burst up out of the ground floor and landed a little unsteadily in the main area of the library again. I pulled the map out of my pocket; mind racing as I tried to discern where exactly a demon possessed boy might go next. "Watari! He might have gone straight out through the front doors and into the crowd outside! He could kill them all!"

Watari shook his head, looking vaguely panicky as he glanced about the surrounding area. "Nuh-uh. There's no way he could without us knowing. I activated the security senses on the building when I was in the security booth. If he tries to force the doors in any way shape or form, the alarm's go off and the emergency shutters fall into place."

I bit my lip, a little unconvinced. "You're banking a lot on him not being able to break through the shutters then."

"It'll buy us enough time to catch up to him at least. _That's _what I'm banking on." Watari glanced at the map over my shoulder and then, with a groan, indicated a large, open area with his finger. "Rear of the building, second floor. Atrium space. It has a large glass ceiling. If the kid can fly he can bust straight on through and escape without any hindrance."

I tossed the map aside and charged for the staircase with Watari hot on my heels. "Which way?" I screamed as we emerged onto the second floor, my ankle twisting jarringly as Watari ungainly pivoted about to face the open area around the other side of the staircase.

"This way, come on!"

We both booked for the rear of the library, moving very quietly and carefully once we came within close proximity to the atrium. A sound was emitting from somewhere between the shelves and I slowed my movement considerably as we encroached upon it.

"Watari… do you hear that?" I asked, glancing off towards the right. Watari, eyes locked stalwartly into the forward facing position, looked in the direction I was facing and cocked his head to the side, apparently straining to hear what I was hearing.

"I don't hear anything… what does it sound like?"

I tilted my head back, having no such trouble picking up just what the sound itself was. "Like… somebody crying…"

We rounded a corner and I was once again confronted by the image of the sickly boy, crouched down behind one of the shelves, crying despairingly into his arms.

"You… you're the boy I saw downstairs…" I approached him carefully, the gun barrel directed away from his face. His sobbing increased in velocity until the entire room seemed to reverberate with the sound. "Are you lost?"

"Tsuzuki, who are you talking to?" Watari called from behind me. I turned toward him, entirely nonplussed that he could possibly miss this child's dismal display. I knew that Watari's eyesight was poor but to pretend as though he couldn't hear those loud pitiful cries was beyond ignorant. It was cruel.

"Have you taken leave of your senses? There's a boy sitting there by the shelves. Can't you see -" I pointed back towards the shelves and felt my skin grow numb. The boy had disappeared, his keening cries fading away as though he were receding into the distance. " – him…?"

Watari was once again giving me that same look of concern I had been subjected to all night. It made me wonder if perhaps I _was_ a little touched in the head. "Tsuzuki… are you feeling okay?"

"I… I don't know." I murmured, scratching my chin, trying to avoid making eye contact. I was so flushed by shame and irritation I could actually feel the part in my hair burning.

Watari's eyebrows kneaded in the center, expressing an almost cartoon-like look of concern. "Look… I don't mean to sound insensitive, mate… but you'll have to save your mental breakdown for later." I glowered at him unappreciatively, quite hurt by his reference to my presently unstable mental constitution. Sometimes I think Watari could be inadvertently cruel. "We gotta keep moving or we'll lose the suspect."

I nodded, brushing past him with my gun arm set back into the original defensive position. "Mmm. You're right. Come on."

We pushed on ahead, moving towards the atrium and finding a bloodied trail leading up a small set of steps into a wide open area housing a number of astronomy related texts and a large telescope aimed towards the glass ceiling, used for planetary observations and the like. As Watari had guessed, the boy had already made his way there and stood in the center of the room, stroking the head of what looked to me like a Seeing Eye dog. I assumed this must have belonged to one of the people in the library. The dog itself remained seemingly docile despite what must have been a traumatizing chain of events and stood quite still, body rocking slightly with the force of its' breathing. Watari and I approached quietly, ducking behind the wall caused by the addition of the upper floor, just close enough to bear witness to the rapid, illogical murmurings of the strange, veiled creature we'd pursued from one end of the library to another.

"N-not en-uh-nuh-ough yuh-yet… st-sti-st-still nn-not enough." I glanced over the wall, perhaps a little daringly and saw the boys' hand stray away from the head of the golden Labrador. He knelt on the floor, one finger outstretched. It was shaking, I noticed, as though the boy were in the advanced stages of Parkins's Disease. His whole body, in fact, seemed now to be operating out of his control. "We m-muh-ust start the chuh-chu-chain again…" His trailed his finger across the floorboards as though drawing something. "The su-su-suffering is p-p-power… the more pain, the-the-the m-m-more potent the hosts energy! That is n-nuh-nature's way, of c-c-course… M-m-more is nuh-nuh-needed… bring me m-m-more power, my children. My four luh-luh-limbs within the Wuh-wuh-waking W-w-world… on this anniversary, re-v-v-vive that which has luh-l-lain dormant. … it's still nuh-not enough to sus-suh-sust-tuh-tAIN muh-muh…" He jerked his head as though shooing away a persistent bug and I recognized the irritation present in most individuals whom stuttered. The exasperation of not being able to get across the words they wanted to say. "_Me. _Nuh-not enough t-to sust-tuh-tain me. F-FUH-Fuck I-I-it a-all. Not yet… not yet, not yet, not yet, not yet…" His finger started moving with hastened effort, so quickly I could actually hear the joints cracking as it twisted unnaturally from side to side. "B-b-begin with huh-huh-her… proceed f-fro-from th-th-there… bring mu-mu-me their d-duh-darkness… allow me t-t-to sup of their t-t-torment… more, more, more, more, p-p-power…"

Watari and I exchanged a look and nodded at one another, seeming to understand without words that this unnaturalness had gone on long enough. Wordlessly, we stepped as one onto the short stairway and, with weapons raised, ascended into the atrium area proper.

"That's quite far enough!" I snapped. "This ends here!"

The boy's finger gradually slowed in its' swiveling movements and he glanced, with great difficulty over his shoulder. It was quite pitiful to watch, to see the frustration. The inability to hold his head still enough to make eye contact. His jaw clenched tightly, lower lip sucked in so far that the skin of his chin was pulled tight across his lower row of teeth. "M-mu-my, m-mu-my… you c-c-certainly are p-pu-p-persistent creatures. But th-th-then again, so is a c-c-cockroach."

Watari smiled in almost a nasty manner, licking the corner of his lips in order to wet them I suppose. "You really mustn't lather on the praise like that, or you'll make us blush."

The boy smiled, his head jerking back, around, up and down. His eyes kept straying upward, as though there were something irksome digging into his scalp and these spasms were simply his attempt to dislodge it. "Are you q-q-quite certain it is only y-y-y-your ch-chu-cheeks that are b-b-burn-in-in-ing, W-Wuh-W-Watari-s-san?" His eyes darted down towards Watari's arm and I too looked finding, not just to my alarm, that my blond companions entire arm from the shoulder down to the gloved fingers, was aflame. Watari's eyes grew wide and regardless of his previous caution in remaining alert, he dropped both Berettas' in his panic.

"JESUS!" He cursed, thrashing his arm back and forth through the air, attempting to snuff out the flame. I was able to think faster, on account of my not being the one on fire and whipped the thin jacket from around my waist and tossed it over Watari's arm, patting it fervently in order to extinguish the unnaturally invoked flame. As soon as he was sure it was out, Watari, cringing, threw the material aside and with a tremulous expression started to examine his arm. We were both surprised I think to see that not so much as an inch of his skin had been blistered.

The boys' smile slid upwards into a truly demonic countenance. "It is in d-d-darkness when our imagin-n-nations give sh-shape to our deepest f-fears…" That smile became an outright snicker, his lips curling up until they seemed to cut directly through the rounded cheeks. "Tell me, Shinig-g-g-gami… is there s-s-something about fire that fuh-frightens you?"

Panting, eyes distended slightly, Watari didn't seem able to reply. He continued to clutch at his arm, seeing without seeing and he made no effort to retrieve the discarded weaponry. I moved in front of him, focusing on the _mana _accumulating within my body, preparing myself for the inevitable squirmish. The boy continued to smile but he was now shaking so wildly that his features were almost a blur.

"Huh-hmm. So… Tsuzuki-s-s-san is ready to t-t-take me on by himself?" With a disproportionably loud 'Thunk' one of the shadows fell free from the boys face, revealing…

Oh shit.

The skin of his face was peeling away, as though each layer were a sticker coming loose from a glass surface. Unlike a snake shedding its' skin, the boys face was filled with deep, blooded crevices, as though chunks of flesh had been torn away. It seemed as if some hideous disease was eating him alive from the inside out. One of his eyes was wrong… it swilled about in the socket, leaking a thick, grayish substance. As I watched, another thick chunk fell free from the boys' neck and splattered wetly onto the floor, splashing blood liberally across the wooden paneling.

I felt dizzy and the room started to spin. My lips drew back tightly, fighting back the meaty gag reflex threatening to spill over onto my tongue. At the last second I managed to pull myself back together. I prayed that this would end quickly, one way or the other.

The boy seemed to be enjoying the reaction he was receiving from me and to aggravate this further, retrieved the piece of flesh from the floor and forced it back into the gap from which it had fallen.

"What a sh-shame your d-d-d-darkness is cuh-closed off to-to muh-me…" He distended his fingers from his throat so that droplets of residual blood flicked outwards and connected with the flesh of my face. I wiped it from my cheeks with my sleeve with more nonchalance than I actually felt. "I s-s-so w-w-ould have enjoyed giving rise to the d-d-elusions of your ano-ano-mal-lous m-mind."

I focused on directing my mana to internal kinetic friction, displacing energy to cause the books in the shelf beside the Underdweller to explode outward. A particularly thick volume flew by so close to his face that it almost cut it off his ear. "Enough talk! This is the end of the road for you, Underdweller! Interfering with the living is in direct violation to the Interdimensional treaty, forged by the great Celestial, Intermediate and Underdwelling establishments." I composed a series of flames into my left hand, holding them outward so that the boy would have felt the heat generated against his mildewing flesh. "By mine authority, judgment be done!"

The Underdweller lifted his brow in a curt gesture, dislodging a fraction of his eyelid in the process. "I c-c-c-c-c." He growled irritably to himself and shook his head like a dog trying to get water out of its' ears. "_Can_ see th-th-that you are s-suh-serious this tuh-tuh-t-time… that look in your eyes… you m-m-mean to s-summon, d-don't you?"

This had of course been my exact intention and I felt it wise to do so before our irksome child made another hearty break for the exit.

My particular Shinigami abilities were as a Summoner, able to call forth 12 Celestial beings from the Imaginary World known as Shikigami, to come to my aid in times of duress. As far as my understanding goes, I am the only Guardian of Death to have in my service so prodigious a number of these demi-gods. Whence enforcing their powers in battle alongside my own, I was a formidable force and at that moment, after a long night of feeling embarrassed, idiotic and frightened, I was in the mood to be the intimidating one for a change. Holstering the insignificant mortal weapon, I freed my hands and brought them into the summoning position; index fingers placed together, middle fingers looped around them, with the rest laced tightly together. This signature was representative of piercing the Imaginary World; all summoning gestures involved the distension of the fingers to some degree, for precisely this purpose.

I focused on the _mana _within, inserted my wavelength through the barriers of the Interdimensional layer. "I humbly call upon the 12 gods that protect me-"

I was interrupted by Watari suddenly grabbing my arm and wrenching my fingers apart so roughly they almost twisted. I shrieked, bringing my left hand about and having to actually prevent myself from slapping Watari's face. He gripped my wrist, staring at me as though I were mad.

"In this confined space?" He cried, disbelief etched across his features. "With civilians nearby and the media swarming about the place?! Why not just waltz outside on Byakko's back, wearing an 'I'm an Undead T-shirt?!'"

I yanked my hand away, aggravated. It was all very well for him to question my actions when he was doing nothing to try and resolve the situation. Unless you counted squirming about on the floor like a bedraggled moth, waiting for its' wings to dry as being useful. "Well, what do you suggest then?"

Watari, having retrieved his Beretta's, aimed them at the Underdweller as a means of preventing any further action. "Try a fuda restraint spell first." He suggested, thumbing back the safety, just to show he meant business. Feeling a little embarrassed that I hadn't thought of this sooner, I retrieved an always present and always useful fuda slip from my pocket and hurriedly scrawled some spell signature onto its' surface. "To the cardinal directions; guide my hand… open to mine humble eyes the barriers between worlds… ensnare thy target –" I extended the fuda slip between my index and middle fingers. "– go forth – Vector Arrest!"

A number of golden cords expelled out from the fuda, becoming sharp points that shot down towards the boy, whose eyes both seemed to be closed. As the barbs came close to ensnaring his body, he opens his eyes and with a strange double armed swooping gesture serrated through each of the needles. They fell to the floor, soft and as ineffective as if I had hurled tendrils of ribbons at him.

"Your p-p-powers are qu-quite wuh-w-wonderful…" The boy simpered, turning the remains of the Vector Arrest to dust with a sway of his hand. "B-but you st-st-still need more tuh-time… some time to th-th-think and some time t-to evolve. And s-s-soon… the day shall arrive when Y-Y-YOU will awaken." He climbed unsteadily to his feet and with a constantly shaking hand, ran his fingers down over the guide dogs face, caressing its' snout and ears a few times before turning to walk away. "Confine? See that they suffer a little, won't you? There's a good girl."

Watari moved around me and stalked after the boy, his face so blotched with red spots it looked like badly mixed raspberry ice cream. It seemed I wasn't the only one who was sick and fed up with being treated as a negligible nuisance.

"Last chance you son of a B! DON'T MOVE!" He roared, because the boy wasn't taking the slightest bit of notice. Watari flashed me a helpless look over his shoulder, asking silent permission for what he was next about to do and then, every muscle creasing with tension, he squeezed the trigger of the right hand Beretta. The bullet might have made contact; I can't say so with any surety. Because at the same moment the bang echoed around the room, the boy disintegrated entirely, going up in a puff of feathers that swirled into a vague vortex before streaming upwards and out through the libraries glass ceiling, smashing it into shards in the process. Watari and I covered our heads until we were sure nothing was going to cut us.

Watari ran into the center of the room and stared up at the shattered ceiling, cursing as he kicked a book aside. "Dammit all to Hell! He got away!"

My eyes were still at ground level, so I was able to see what Watari had missed. I swallowed deeply as I edged around the shelves, pulling on his arm as I reached him, forcing him to back up a couple of steps. "Yeah… but it looks like he left us a present." I indicated the dog and Watari uttered a strange noise that sounded like 'Yark.' We both took a step back, guns aimed at the pooch, which was started to mutate at a phenomenal rate.

"What the Hell did that creep do to her?" Watari hissed and even at a moment like that, I couldn't help but admire his insight as to the gender of the dog.

"I don't know…" I whispered back. "Looks like it's not only humans he can mess with."

Watari growled, so infuriated his forearms started to tremble. "Fucking bastard! I can't stand someone that's cruel to animals!"

The doomed creature whimpered as its' features melted together like candle wax; bones cracking as its' internal structure was reconfigured. A bloodied line appeared directly down the center of her face, cutting deep through her muzzle and into the vein lines of her neck. With a sickening, squelchy rip, the poor animal was divided in half, all the way back to the tail, held together by only stringy strips of flesh, muscle and arteries. Her spine extended, causing the shoulders to expand and hunch over. It was as though something was growing inside of her, forcing the canine flesh into rapid, bloodied disfigurement in order to make itself known. This presence shortly thereafter presented itself.

From the bloodied hole in the dogs' neck, a woman's face appeared, pressing against the tendrils of flesh and veins as though they were bars of some grisly prison cell. The face was featureless, except for a wide, awning mouth, cut vertically above the chin, rather than horizontally and fringed with sharp, needlelike teeth. There was something vaguely suggestive about it; about the way the tongue thrashed about the lining of the mouth, that made me feel as though I were intruding upon something I ought not to. Two long, pale arms, deeply etched with black and blue vein lines, came scrabbling out through the neck hole, one finding contact with the ground, the other scratching mindlessly at the air, as though determined to reach us. I noticed that the nails on the woman's hands were long, immaculately maintained and painted bright, seductive red.

The dog howled mournfully as its' fur seemed to catch alight and burn away in a matter of seconds, leaving what flesh that remained, knotted, bubbling scar tissue. The woman inside redoubled her apparent efforts to escape the horrific confines, a pair of long slender legs ripping free from the dogs' ribcage, curling delicately around to clench its' molten sides. The flesh of her feet appeared to have been melted directly into a pair of red stilettos, the sharp points adorned by the sinewy flesh of the hellhound. The dog snarled, turning its' deformed muzzle to snap at these new, seemingly useless appendages, before her eyes, as red as her dripping hide, came to focus on us.

Watari's lower lip dropped, revealing his teeth clenched tightly together. "Oh god… don't think I'm gonna have much of an appetite for dinner now."

"Just have a vegetarian dish." I flashed Watari a weak smile, fighting back nausea in an attempt to be brave. This was not a manner of beastie that I was at all familiar with. "Hey, don't think you and I have fought side by side before. Try not to slow me down, okay?"

He grinned back at me, though he still looked rather green around the gills. "Don't mind me, old geezer. You just try and keep up!"

It came for us, growling and snapping, the woman's legs jerking in a wild spasmodic dance as they battered against the dogs rotting side. Watari and I broke apart, him diving to the right and unloading three rounds into the side of the dogs split face in quick succession. I went to the left and 'Confine' veered with me, the nails on the woman's outstretched arms as bright and as dangerous as the jagged teeth in the dogs' eviscerated maw.

Backed between two sets of shelves, I harvested energy from the _mana _pocket inside of me and hurled the black and purple tinged blight at the offensive horror as it approached. The angle was wrong; the hex splintering the wooden floor between Confine's feet as the beast lurched at me, both faces screaming from deep in their throats.

She hit me in the thighs, slamming me painfully against the wall, the canine maw gnashing to get its' teeth at my skin. The scent of burnt flesh washed over me and I wanted to fire another blight but I wasn't able to get my hands free. The woman's fingers scrabbled at my neck and I was forced to hold them back with one arm, whilst using the other to fend off the drooling, salivating jaws of the dog. The woman's heeled shoes scrabbled desperately at the floor, pushing me further against the wall until my head was forced up at a painful angle, constricting my spine and bringing my face even closer to Confine's ravenous mouths. I struck out with my legs, barely aware that I was moaning in fear and disgust, a sound as guttural and primal as the infuriated, bloodthirsty shrieks that came from the canine abomination.

I gasped as the pressure was suddenly lifted away from my chest and Confine emitted an almost puppyish yelp as she was yanked away from me by the scruff of her neck and liberally tossed from one side of the Atrium to the other. Watari fired five shots after her, three punching round black holes into the canine's withered, burn pocked barrel chest, sending foul smelling fluid splattering against the telescopes by the enclosing balcony. Confine groaned almost humanly, as she staggered back to her feet, jaws snapping together as she came bounding towards us again, snorting furiously, the vertical mouth in her chest expositing its' vile, flickering tongue like a snake tasting the air.

When she was in range, I snaked out my right hand, directing energy towards one of the gore-splattered telescopes. I opened my fingers and the instrument came sailing across the room to me, bludgeoning Confine over the head as it came. It scraped off only the smallest amount of skin but the injury made her pause and she cocked her head uncertainly.

I displaced energy beneath my feet and rose upwards, Watari mimicking my movement, curling backwards gracefully to position himself on top of one of the bookshelves. His eyes were on the ceiling, on a particularly long and jagged shard of glass that hadn't yet fallen loose from its' bonds. I could see what he was thinking and nodded, letting him know that I had cottoned on. I freed one hand and extended it towards a packed book cart, resting idly nearby. At my summons, it rolled into motion, gradually building momentum as it zoomed along towards' Confine, who yipped in acute pain as the metal trolley collided with her hindquarters knocking her off balance. One of the stiletto donned legs lashed backwards, pushing the offending cart aside and the canine atrocity locked its baleful gaze on me again, spittle foaming at the corners of its' unhinged mouth.

"Come on." I urged, trying to goad her a little. The bookcase immediately behind me wobbled from side to side and I turned my head to see Watari leaping along the tops of the shelves like an anxious bullfrog, trying to get himself in the perfect position to exercise our unspoken plan.

Confine took the opportunity to attack while I was distracted. Faster than my eyes could follow, she crossed the room and leapt upward, sinking her teeth into my ankle and dragging down hard on my legs. I kicked at her, but using the woman's hands protruding from her chest, she latched her long nails into my calves and scurried up towards my waist. I screamed as her nails pierced my flesh, feeling the hot, wet rivulets of blood trickle down into my shoes. My altitude decreased. The woman's vertical mouth snickered, reaching out for me through the cage of entrails stretched across her featureless face.

Her weight was too much for me to pull against and with a pained grunt; I collapsed to the floor, landing jarringly on one side of my ankle. Confine was thrown loose by the jolt and I used a blight to send her backwards, lashing out with my uninjured foot for extra measure. Her stiletto'd feet went skidding across the carpet, her rear end colliding bodily with the side of the bookcase Watari was preparing to leap from. His arms wind milled wildly for a second and he looked as though he might regain his balance, until Confine stumbled sideways in an attempt to find her footing and slammed her shoulder against the base of the shelf. Watari toppled over with a yelp, smacking his temple against the neighboring ledge with a crack that echoed throughout the room. I could see his eyes roll upwards in his head, a trickle of blood worming down out of his ear.

Confine was on him before he could regain his footing. Her split canine maw clamped about his outstretched leg. She bit through the denim, through the skin and into the bone. Ripped her head left and right, as though breaking the neck of a lesser beast. Watari yelped as he was lashed about from side to side, his fingernails scrabbling desperately at his waist, trying to get a hold of his Beretta's. There was a muffled snap – like a branch breaking under a blanket and Watari's lower leg simply came away in Confine's mouth, blood gushing from the serrated flesh. Watari, free from his mauling so to speak, stared in open mouthed disbelief at where his foot once was and then up at Confine, still clutching the severed appendage in her mouth.

"Hey!" He snapped accusingly, the timbre of his composed voice causing Confine to cease her death maul and blink down at him over her blood drenched chops. "I have a date tonight, so I'm gonna be needing that foot, thankyou!"

And this, I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it myself. Watari, with a frown, swung himself onto his knees, bit his lip against the pain and grabbed Confine's muzzle in one hand, her chin in the other and literally _prized _her jaws apart, forcing her to relinquish his leg. It fell to the floor with a wet thunk but Watari didn't move to retrieve it yet. Instead, he swung Confine about as best he could, holding her mouth open towards me. He gestured wildly, his forehead soaked with sweat.

"Shoot!" He screamed.

I didn't need to be told twice. I charged towards them, slipping sideways in Watari's blood and landing hand on my hip, sending sharp pain up through my spine. I forced back the ache with a sharp bite to my lip and scrabbled back to my feet, sliding a fuda out of my pocket and imbuing it with serration blight.

A few muttered words and then, taking careful aim, I hurled the charmed paper down the beast's gaping throat, past sharp teeth with Watari's flesh still caught between them. Watari released her jaws and snatched up his foot, rolling away between the shelves as Confine's human arms lashed out at his retreating backside. I got a good distance away and made the invocation rights with my hands, murmuring the release spell.

Thick, heat infused waves of white electricity scorched Confine's body from the inside out, causing the human portion of her to scream just as loudly as her outer canine form. She was greatly injured, one of her rear legs made lame by the spell, blood gushing out from the splits in her body. She fell to her side, whimpering, choking as hot fluid spurted up out of her throat. She collapsed in a heap and I shouted with glee, believing that we had felled her.

The cry of triumph died in my throat. The woman's long, neatly manicured hands came sliding out through the tendrils of the dogs thick barrel chest and moved to stem the blood flow of the split in the crown of Confine's head. My heart sank as the wound closed over before my eyes, the blood reversing its' flow and returning to inside the grotesque form. The woman's vertical mouth clicked together eagerly as Confine climbed unsteadily back to her feet, staggering sideways like a newborn foal teetering about. She was shaken but very much alive.

Fortunately, demonic creatures are not alone when it comes to healing oneself. While Confine was recovering, Watari was busy repairing his severed leg. He reattached the foot by focusing on the limb returning to its' proper place, using fast paced finger gestures to spiritually 'sew' the muscles, sinews, bones and veins together. Reattaching limbs is not a simple process and can be quite painful. It was most likely Watari would not be able to put much weight on it for the remainder of the fight.

We didn't give Confine a chance to recover. Watari tested his reattached foot by gingerly shifting his weight onto it, maneuvering the ankle from side to side and up and down. And then, with a slight wince, he charged at Confine, leaving both Berettas's holstered. The beast snarled at his approach and lunged but Watari ducked his arm under its' snout and drove his fist up into the concave of the lower jaw, sending its' vibrantly red tongue smacking against the roof of its' mouth. He used his preternatural strength that all Shinigami are possessed of to deliver punch after punch after punch into Confine's degenerated face, glands and throat, driving the possessed creature awkwardly back. There was no style to it; just straight and dirty street fighting 'king-hits'. Watari had no martial arts experience and was simply making use of his kinetic _mana_ generated physical power. He shifted his weight backwards, shoving his foot down into the gaping barrel chest, colliding with the screeching face of the featureless woman, knocking out at least half of the needlepoint teeth lining the vertical mouth.

The dog reeled backwards, swishing its' long head from side to side as though attempting to dislodge water from its' ears and I took advantage of its' stunned state. I used kinetic energy to quickly close the distance between us, slinging the carbon rifle around my torso and slapping the deformed canine across the face with it, drawing black viscous blood. The woman's long hands tried to reach out and wrap themselves about my neck but I ducked out of the way and whipped the metal rifle down over my shoulder, bringing the rifle chamber against Confine's knobby skull. With a forward kick, I knocked the canine's long muzzle upwards, clearing a space to then drive the barrel point into the gap of her chest, directly between the bloodied, splintered mouth of the blank faced woman, the heart of the beast. I held the grip tightly as I unleashed a volley of bullets directly down this obscure manifestations throat, sending strips of pink flesh and rotted chunks of singed fur splattering down from the canine's eviscerated stomach. She squealed in a puppyish fashion and managed to wrench herself free, snagging a hold of my ankle between her ghostly white teeth, dragging me backwards beneath the shattered, awning roof of the auditorium. I screeched in pain as the creatures jaws gnashed down through my skin, penetrating to the bone and tearing through my trouser leg.

Despite the pain, I allowed myself to be towed along, the transition eased by the blood flowing out of my leg, making the wooden floor slippery beneath my hind. The limbs of the interior woman had fallen completely limp, her arms trailing along the floor beside my legs. Confine's ability to regenerate herself apparently rested with this portion of her disfigured body and now that this had been destroyed, killing her would hopefully be possible.

Watari came limping after us, nursing his leg and looking questioningly at me from my upside down vision. I waved my arms hysterically, my hair soaked through from the bloodied floor beneath my head and screamed; "What the Hell are you waiting for?! Shoot you brain-dead bimbo! SHOOT!"

Watari's eyes widened at my insult and then he exclaimed with surprise as though only just noticing what was happening. He reloaded the bullets of the expired Beretta (completely ignoring the other with a full clip at his waist) humming what sounded like 'Ghostbusters' as Confine continued to drag me away. I slammed my free foot into the side of her face, trying to buy some time as I heard the expired bullet casings clack to the floor behind me. I swiveled around onto my stomach, staring at Watari with mounting panic as he nonchalantly slotted the pistol's sliding magazine back into place, looking it over fondly. If I could have bitten his leg off myself, I would have done it!

"FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, SHOOT! SHE'S GONNA EAT ME!!" **(1)**

"Shoulda thought of that before ya went and called me a bimbo." Watari said with a pleasant smile. I responded with a string of considerably more creative names and he got the hint that it was time to stop messing about. "A'right but stop pressurin' me! Ya know my aim goes wonky when I'm stressed." He muttered, aiming the Berretta skyward, tongue clenched between his teeth and eyes narrowed into slits. _Stressed? He _was stressed_?_

I was on the cusp of swearing again, when he fired off two well-aimed shots, serrating my advancing tirade off cleanly at the neck. There was a high-pitched ping and then a second, groaning creak that said the bullets had found their mark. I ceased my struggling and instead, crossed my mental fingers and threw my arm up, shielding my face and praying to all that was Holy that I would not be the one to suffer for this.

Confine had tracked the direction of Watari's arm, suspicious that she had not been the target and had time only to raise her eyes before the thick shard of glass impaled her directly through the center of her neck, driving her chin down into the ground with such force I felt the physical vibration rattle through my lower torso. She emitted a pitiful half-howl, half-scream that offered me room enough to yank my tattered leg free. Thankfully, the only damage I had sustained were several deep teeth marks, which would heal in a matter of moments. I staggered to my feet, limping a little on account of my injury and shot Watari a shaky smile.

"A plus in dramatic timing. You okay?" I panted, hands pressed to my knees.

"Think I just lost some weight." Watari said, leaning against one of the bookshelves. At that precise moment it tilted backwards, like an old drunk man sliding off of a barstool and upended all its' contents onto the floor. Watari managed to right himself at the last moment and stumbled ungainly away from the wreckage he had caused. He cleared his throat rather peevishly and straightened up, wiping the sweat off of his forehead with the sleeve of the jacket about his waist. "I haven't had a fight like that since my time as a street urchin." He shook his head sadly as he looked down at the carcass of what had once formally been a loyal, companion animal. "That bastard… how cruel!"

My throat felt stiff and tight. I was very much a dog person (in more ways than one) and having to put one down for a hallow point naptime was low on my list of ways in which I would have chosen to spend my evening. Even if I tried to convince myself that what we had done had been in the beast's best interests, it still didn't lessen the heartache. "I know. And to serve what purpose? We weren't even able to get a straight answer out of him!" I bit my lip, giving the bookshelf beside me a small kick as a means to vent my frustration. A couple of books fell off of the upper most shelf and conked me on the cranium, which didn't nothing to appease my bad temper. "Dammit… what a complete balls-up."

"Tsuzuki, come take a look at this." Watari said in an awfully low tone of voice. I obediently wandered over to find him examining something on the floor, precisely where the boy had been scrawling not a moment before we burst onto the scene. A strange circular symbol that looked oddly familiar had been drawn in blood, done, I suppose by cutting or pricking his fingertip.

"Is that… a sigil?" I asked, referring to the signature mark left by demons to mark their activities or seal the deal of a specified contract. Watari nodded.

"Mmm-hmm. I think so." He took out a small disposable camera from a compartment of the holster belt and snapped a couple of shots of the sigil, adopting a new angle with each snap. "I can't translate this as of right now but I'll get a shot of it for later." He said as way of explanation.

I sighed, cracking my neck from side to side in order to alleviate the tension accumulating within the muscle. "I guess we're done here… maybe we'd better do one final sweep of the library; just to make sure that Underdweller hasn't conjured anything else." I shuddered at the thought that perhaps more of the corpses we had bypassed on our way here may have been at that moment twitching to some semblance of life and crawling towards us from between the shelves. I just about sprained my ears listening for the sounds of their dried fingers scraping along the floorboards but heard nothing.

Watari climbed back to his feet with a groan and checked his watch. The glass face was covered with dried blood and he had to whet his finger in order to clean it away, so that the time would be legible. "This didn't even take as long as I thought it would. I might even make it in time for appetizers." He put the camera away and turned to follow me back out of the atrium, neither of us noticing that the mutated pooch had one left in it. I saw the shadow fall across us at the last second and spun about, a warning cry on my lips that was interrupted by the sound of a gunshot ringing out from behind one of the shelves. A bloodied hole appeared directly between the pooches' eyes, causing it to topple immediately. Watari, having finally noticed its' reappearance, dove out of the way into a clumsy sideways roll that must have bruised his shoulder and drew his gun, aiming not at the dog but instead at whomever was shooting from between the shelves.

"ASS RIGHT THERE, FREEZEHOLE!" He screamed and I almost laughed at hearing his words so badly tangled on account of his nervousness.

From between the shelves stepped a thin, almost malnutritioned boy, with mousy brown hair, straight leg jeans and a beautiful, if currently petulant expression. He made his way immediately over towards the body of the mutated pooch and fired an additional shot into the side of its' skull, just to be sure it wasn't about to spring to life again. After this he turned to us.

"That's the thanks I get for saving your life, Watari-san?" He said, in response to Watari's leveling of the gun in his direction. I laughed, feeling my nerves settle drastically as I brushed my disheveled, bloody hair back out of my face.

"Oh hey, Hisoka." I said, waving an indolent hand at my partner. "Don't mind Watari. He's learning to be combatative."

Hisoka looked at Watari skeptically, saying with one doleful expression what some men might have said in a half dozen words. "Oh, right. Well… you're doing a bang up job, Watari-san." He made his idle way over, using his fingertip to lazily push the barrel of Watari's gun down and away from his face. Watari, rather red in the cheeks at being treated so disrespectfully, responded by spinning the weapon about on his fingers in a classic show off maneuver, before then sliding it back into its' holster.

"Oh, don't patronize me, bon." 'Bon' was the name Watari used for Hisoka. It was a _kansai_** (2)** term meaning 'kid' or 'boy' but had an affectionate twang to it. "I know a psycho-geriatric-commando-headlock that'll send you reeling for a week."

Hisoka gave a very small smile. "I'm sorry. Didn't mean to step on any toes." He shook the pistol barrel at the dead poochy, whose skull juices were currently leaking across the linoleum at an alarming rate. "Is this the culprit?"

"Unfortunately, no." Watari said, who was using a loose page from one of the surrounding books to scrape the aforementioned cranial matter from the sides of his shoes. "The true culprit high-tailed it and left this little sweetie for our enjoyment."

I toed the remnant, obviously not so concerned with dirtying my perpetually grubby shoes. "I think it's really dead this time." I swallowed back another gag reflex as the organism squelched wetly beneath my ministrations. "Just what the Hell is this thing anyway?"

"Like nothing I have ever seen before." Watari admitted, screwing up the wad of paper and tossing it aside. I caught a glimpse of what looked like Latin text as it sailed through the air and wondered just how much the original volume had been valued at.

Hisoka knelt down, examining the monstrosity from every angle. "Most parts of it are canine but these…" Here he indicated the bizarre feminine limbs and the pulpy bullet riddled mass that had once been the mutated woman's face. "Correct me if I'm wrong but it almost resembles human features, doesn't it?" We all looked at one another uncomfortably. "You don't suppose…"

"I wouldn't rule anything out, bon." Watari knelt alongside Hisoka, ruffling in his holster again, which I gathered had more items than Batman's utility belt. "It's an uncertain world we live in."

Out emerged a scalpel and a sealed container, with which Watari peeled away a skin sample from both the canine and human torsos and stowed. "Maybe with a bit of elbow grease I can figure something out… I mean, the spinal cord, skull configuration… all symbiotic of homo-sapien skeletal structure."

"You mean this… animal… was intentionally fused with a human?" I asked, feeling slightly nauseated by the thought.

"I don't suppose we could readily discount it." Watari said almost sinisterly. I fought back the urge to swat him on the back of the head. Why on earth was he compelled to speak in a manner conducive only in sustaining this repugnant air?

"But how is that even possible? Saying stuff like that Watari…" I chastised, glancing about with mounting anxiety. I felt my legs beginning to throb from the knees down, on account of the strain I had put against them during the night. "Are you _trying _to frighten me?" It would not have surprised me if of course this had been his exact intention.

Watari looked at me over his shoulder, with a far too innocent expression. "Just rendering my opinion, big fella." He glanced down at the sample in his hand and then let out a high-pitched yelp, falling backwards onto his butt. Hisoka leapt to his feet and we both looked down at him, questioning his strange behavior. It became obvious however, when, with an ever increasing hissing, the body of the canine oddity, collapsed suddenly into a big, hunk of black viscous goo, not unfamiliar to what we had encountered upon the doorway before entering the Tachiagari.

"Oh-ho… what's this?" Watari commented, with an air of almost offensive nonchalance.

Hisoka groaned with distaste, holding his jacket sleeve over his nose to block out the acrid smell the degenerative blob was now oozing with such abundance. "What the Hell is happening to it?" He questioned, slightly muffled from behind his sleeve.

Watari caressed his chin, twisting his lower lip from side to side as though it might aid in his speculative musings, hmming and 'hawwing' to himself.

"Apoptosis…" He finally declared, though he didn't sound entirely certain.

Naturally, I didn't catch the gist of this at all. "Apop-_what?_"

"Apoptosis… cell suicide." Watari translated, edging backwards in order to escape from the increasing black pool of muck. With a throaty grunt, he reverse rolled onto his feet and stood upwards, swishing his hair over and out of his face in an admittedly cool gesture. "And at such an unusually accelerated rate… This is almost the exact counter-aspect of a Shinigami's molecular structure."

"In standard Japanese, professor?" I asked sarcastically, prodding the side of his face just to express my irritation with his relentless psychobabble. He grabbed my finger to prevent the continued poking and held it tightly whilst he continued his explanation.

"Shinigami heal rapidly because we possess an additional chromosome within our DNA configuration. DNA, the abbreviated term for deoxyribonucleic acid, is the base most contributor to nucleic development, conveying genetic instructions in the advancement and functioning of all known living organisms, including viruses even. Chromosomes store information within something of an invisible blueprint that maps the development potential of our bodies. A DNA strand is an organized structure of chromosomes. A chromosome is a singular piece of DNA. Human cells have twenty-three pairs of large, linear nuclear chromosomes. However, studies of Underdweller tissue have found that they have more in common with the genetic structure of a virus, if they are of the parasitic type, such as Saagatanasu."

I felt myself starting to go cross-eyed. Even Hisoka, who had no objection to the development of personal knowledge, was starting to appear glazed and continued listening, I assume, only to serve as an example to myself of how a Shinigami should behave.

Watari continued to waffle on, entirely absorbed in the sound of his own voice and the vat of steaming erudition that came with it. "Demons possess twenty-_five_ pairs of chromosomes, which enables their advanced use of immaterial energy, accelerated strength, speed, reflexive energy, healing capabilities, distension through the air and so forth. Shinigami, as I previously mentioned, are revived by Enma by the supplementing of an additional chromosome pair, giving us twenty-four all up. As such, we fall somewhere between humans and demons."

Unable to help myself, I leaned over and grabbed the top of Watari's nose between my thumb and index finger, giving it a good hard pinch. "If you're going somewhere with this Watari, I'm eager to know. _Today._"

I felt a sharp pain in my ankle and looked down to find Watari's shoe connecting with it. I jumped back, swearing and felt his fingers press against my forehead and push hard, sending me backwards onto my rear with such force I actually bounced. As I previously mentioned, all Guardian's of Death have advanced preternatural strength but what I failed to explain is that our physical constitution is elevated by the amount of _mana _in our bodies. The more _mana _that is stored within the vessel, the more it lends itself to the Shinigami's corporeal structure. Watari rarely used his powers and as such, his physical strength was considerably greater than most other Guardian's, simply because of the latent _mana _in his system. Though he didn't look particularly stocky, I'd fought with him enough times to know just what could happen when he got particularly worked up.

"Following its' metamorphosis," Watari continued, maintaining a dignified expression as he rubbed the red welt on his nose and I the burgeoning purple bruise on my shin. "This creature, whatever it is, must have devolved, metabolically speaking that is. Upon seizure of the blood flow, it demonstrated a complete metabolic breakdown, reducing its cells entirely to the lowest graduating degree."

"Thus, goo." I simplified, feeling it would have been easier to have said this from the word go. But then again, that was Watari for you. If it could only be said in two words, he would find a way to stretch it into twenty-five.

He rolled his eyes, just to demonstrate how insultingly simple I was. "_Yes_, goo. Where all life on this planet first began, believe it or not. Our beastie here would have to possess an overall chromosome count of less than any other biological organism." He looked at me expectantly and I gather I was supposed to be floored by these words but as usual they made about as much sense to me as green tea flavored rice crackers.

"Well, I guess your little tissue sample will tell you." I said, having nothing better to offer him than this. Watari held up the small jar and stared in dismay at the fogged surface and predictably empty interior.

"Unfortunately, it too has deteriorated." He sighed with much melancholy, as though his Christmas gift had been plucked out of his hands and given to another child. "So much for that…"

"Indeed. I was so enjoying your nerdy, totally irrelevant scientific lecture."

Watari lugged the now useless sample jar at my head. I dodged out of the way at the last second and it bounced off of the bookshelf behind me and landed with a disproportionably loud thud on the floor. Geez, he had a head of steam up that night!

"Irrelevant, my ass! A little knowledge of our enemies might in fact benefit us in the long run! I should think you would learn to appreciate that, considering your 'barrel in, guns blazing' approach causes you to make the same mistake every year in _Karuta!_"

'_Karuta_' to those of you who aren't familiar (though I'm sure you all have a good idea) is a card game played with the _Ogura Hyakuninisshu, _an anthology of 100 poems by 100 poets, composed centuries ago in the _waka _style. (Five lines of 31 syllables arranged 5, 7, 5, 7, 7). To play a game you use two decks of 100 cards; one deck has a complete _waka_, whilst the other deck contains only the last two lines of the poem. There are usually two players or teams of players and one reader. Each side lays out 25 of the fragment cards, the reader reads the first lines of the _waka_, and each side tries to find the fragment that completes it and take it off of the table. If the card is taken from the opponents' area, a card from the finder's side replaces the gap. The first player or team to clear all twenty-five cards wins.

The Summons department staff always came together of a New Year's to play _Kurata _and much fun was had. Though, as Watari had correctly declared, I more often than not got into trouble on account of my forthright nature and ended up snatching the wrong card off of the table, thus earning a penalty for either myself or my team. It was a sore point and something of a shameful flaw in my personality; lacking insight into a situation and simply barreling on in, without thought to the consequences. Watari liked to remind me of it whenever I made fun of his tendency to be a nerd.

And don't scowl at me. If you didn't want to be called a nerd, you'd buy smaller glasses. You've got no one to blame but yourself.

"Why should I need to use my brain, when you're here?!" I whined back, picking up the sample jar and hurling it back at Watari. My aim was predictably overshot and the jar gaily sailed over the atrium balcony and down into the archive of books below. Hisoka followed its' path through the air with a slightly amused expression and I internally dared him to say something about my shoddy throwing skills. Believe it or not, we once had an hour-long argument about my inability to throw him a mandarin from about a foot away.

"It's not _my _job to think for you!" Watari snarled back, looking for something else to throw at me. He seemed to consider the still evaporating pile of goo at his feet but thankfully came to his senses. Instead, he wadded up a piece of paper and hurled it liberally in my direction. It spun off of the tips of his fingers and went straight up into the air before coming directly down into the congealing gunk, sinking with a squealing hiss beneath the surface. "All I'm saying is, try dusting off that frontal lobe every once in a while, you might be surprised what happens!"

I lifted up one leg and started tugging on my shoe, determined to send it hurtling his way before this conversation was at an end. I almost considered leaving my smelly sock inside of it as well, so irate I was. "That's the last thing I need to hear from someone who twists his ankle and falls over whenever a demon attacks, you _woman_!"

"You dirty son of a- How _dare _you call me a woman!"

"How dare _you _take offence at it! What, are you a sexist or something?!"

Hisoka stepped between us, having traded his amused smile in for that familiar, dangerous _yakuza_** (3)**expression, most readily adopted when someone was disturbing his reading. "Guys, stop fighting for a sec and tell me what this here is." He was standing beside the bloodied sigil, which he tapped once with his foot.

"This here?" Watari said unnecessarily. He was still a little flushed in the face and it was with some degree of hesitance that I approached. "A sigil, bon. Any more than that, I couldn't say."

Hisoka cocked his head to the side as he crouched down to examine it. "It looks kind of similar to the contract Saagatanasu left on Hijiri's cornea, don't you think?"

Now I knew why it looked so familiar. "Those were my thoughts too. Watari, are you sure you can't read it?"

Watari could read and even speak a number of Underdweller languages, though sometimes he had a little assistance in this department. I'm sure he'll tell you about it when it's he takes over.

The blond shook his head. "Not offhand. It's a very old dialect. And the writing is messy." He scratched the crown of his head, causing his hair to stand up on end. "I'd need more time than we've currently got to decode it."

"Well, I'm sure you'll crack it. You always do." I gave him a friendly punch on the shoulder, our previous irritations well forgotten as they always were. Watari and I could fight like beasts when the urge took us but our confrontations usually lasted less than four minutes and were quickly forgotten about thereafter.

Hisoka had climbed to his feet again and was wandering around the sigil, examining the room from all sides. "Hey… there's a book over here." He suddenly exclaimed, moving towards said 'book'.

I rolled my eyes, indicating an opened novel beside me. "Yes, Hisoka and there's a book over _here_. It _is _a library. And I know you like books but nows really not the time to be browsing. Let's keep our focus, shall we?"

Hisoka hadn't seemed to take a word of this in. He leaned over the book, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear to prevent it from hindering his sight. "There's something written in it."

"Who would have thought?" I said sarcastically. "A book with something _written _in it." I picked up the book beside me and opened it directly down the middle, flicking through some of the pages. "Hey, look! This book has writing in it too! Of all the freaky coincidences!" I dropped the book and kicked it aside. "Most books have things written in them, Hisoka! I've known this for years!"

"_Weeks_, more like." Watari said with a teasing dissonance. He smirked at my surly expression as he made his way around to where Hisoka was standing and glanced over his shoulder, down onto the pages of the volume. "And I think what the kid is getting at is that there's something written in here that shouldn't be there otherwise. Plus, this is an occult novel and there's only supposed to be astronomy texts in this area." He jabbed his finger against the pages, leaving a grubby fingerprint behind. "Look, it was left lying open, just here beside the sigil. And a number of words have been underlined with a black marker."

"Well, what does it say?" I asked impatiently.

Hisoka examined the book from every which way, finger pressed to his chin thoughtfully. "I'm not sure…" He finally confessed. "It's in English. I can't read it."

I plucked the book from Hisoka's hands by the tips of my fingers, holding only one corner as though it were contaminated. I gingerly steered it towards Watari and relinquished it to his custody. "Watari? You're the halfie."

"Just give me a moment…" He murmured, holding the book close to his face and then further back, to allow his eyes to focus. His lips moved as he read, first in English and then, when he had re-read the paragraph; he translated out loud in Japanese.

"_In the beginning, there was nothingness. Vast emptiness, unknowingness, endlessness. The existence of man was void, lifeless. They wandered in darkness, blind and ignorant, their bodies wrought by unfelt pain. They squalored amongst themselves, fearing death and yet longing for it, trapped as they were in the formless chaos from whence all life sprang. The God of the Waking world took pity on these formless wretches and so vowed to deliver their tortured souls to salvation. The God drove the eternal darkness into the abyss and brought light to the desolate landscape and granted mankind form and instilled them with a sense of purpose. But to this end, those that formed the earth were unable to remain and their great sacrifice was ignored. Driven from light, they dove deep within the wen of the earth, mourning the loss of flesh and life, as they once knew it. And so, it was their time to pray and await the coming of one whom would recognize their plight and bring them out of darkness, into the light and to reclaim that which was so long ago, taken from them…"_

Watari wandered over to a writing station and pulled a piece of paper towards him. He started writing down the words that had been underlined, using the Japanese alphabet so that the meaning would not be lost on us. A minute later he stopped scrawling and held the scrap of paper up in order to survey it. His forehead crinkled in the center, making his face appear aged and expressive. "… how very obscure."

"What?" I asked, coming up behind him.

Watari held up the piece of paper for our inspection, revealing the completed sentence.

"_**The darkness is coming."**_

_**~ EC ~**_

**(1) **Yes this was a line from the Lion King. I went for the cheap laugh, so sue me.

**(2) **_**Kansai: **_I feel like I'm just telling you guys' stuff you already know I'm sure. But for the sake of being thorough; Kansai is the region of Japan where cities like Osaka and Kyoto are situated. The dialect is often described as Japan's answer to 'cockney', hence the abbreviations I use when writing Watari's speech. Since Watari was born and spent his younger years in Kyoto and the rest of his life in Osaka, he uses variations between each cities vernacular when speaking. (Osaka-ben and Kyoto-ben.) Hence the reason he describes his dialect as being 'inaccurate Kansai'.

**(3) **_**Yakuza: **_In an attempt to be as simplistic as possible, I will say that the modern day _Yakuza _are something like the Japanese mafia. The word _yakuza_ itself means 8-9-3. Ya means 8, ku 9, za 3. it comes from Japans counterpart to Black Jack, Oicho-kabu. The generally difference between the both card games are that in Oicho-kabu the cards' objective is to be 19 instead of 21. As you see, the sum of 8, 9 and 3, is 20, which is without any worth in Oicho-kabu. It's from there the name, yakuza, comes from; they are without worth for society. This doesn't mean that they have no use in society; it means that the members are people who somehow do not fit into society - society's misfits. They speak in a certain, brash, almost classically over stereotyped manner and practice _'Irezumi', _which is 'ink insertion', an incredibly painful tattooing technique. It is considered an elegant art process and often used as a mark of the _yakuza,_ who tattoo their entire bodies in a pattern known as Utagawa Kuniyoshi's "Tsuzoku Suikoden Gôketsu Hyakuhachinin", visual story telling, often depicting old yakuza tales, Kabuki plays or animals such as carp, dragons, sakura, elemental properties, etc. All symbols have a specific meaning and it would take an entire essay to explain the tattooing process. My initial point in referring to Hisoka's expression, as 'yakuza' is simply a way of saying that he looked frightening and intimidating. Often, when angered, his manner of speech even switches to yakuza type slang, making him seem even more ferocious and merciless. Tsuzuki usually backs down from it pretty quickly.

A/N: Only two more parts to go and then I'd better hop right back into Dark Adaptation! Thanks as always for reading! Please leave a review if you are enjoying this, even if it's only short I appreciate all the support I get! See you all in part 6!


	6. Soulless Requiem

**Dark Adaptation – Dead Men Working.**

**DISCLAIMER: **Yami no Matseui and its' affiliated characters, concepts and locations belong to Yoko Matsushita and I am earning nothing but the sole satisfaction of telling this story to you fine people.

**A/N: **Part six is up! Thanks as always for your support and I hope you all enjoy!

**~ X ~**

"_A gentle hand will help the dead_

_To find the way to their last bed,_

_Who engineers the mortal's end_

_Will tell you he is man's best friend…"_

_**~ Unknown**_

**~ X ~**

**Soulless Requiem **

**Tsuzuki**

We made our way out of the library, killing those bodies that had started to wander and retrieving the soul of the Librarian. We could salvage nothing more. Where the souls of the numerous other victims had gone I didn't know but I had a horrible sneaking suspicion that the demonic child had devoured them. My nerves were shot, just about every muscle in my body throbbed with pain and my mind was swollen with sadness. Leaving that library felt like walking from a cemetery thick with the memories of long departed loved ones; though of course I hadn't known a one of these people.

It was an hour since we had entered and the backup forces from the Ministry had arrived to perform a secondary sweep of the area. Watari, Hisoka and I were forced to move aside once leaving to avoid being trampled as they stampeded into the library, some calling out greetings as they went.

I heard Watari groan from beside me and shortly thereafter realized why. A number of white vans, emblazoned with various network logo's had pulled into the partitioned parking lot of the _Tachiagari _and were clambering out with camera's, recording equipment and an entire arsenal of attitude at their disposal. One crew was already in place, headed by a thin necked, middle-aged man, bearing the distinct toothy smile of a game show host. His thick hair was carefully combed back and ruthlessly intelligent eyes glimmered with ever surmounting anticipation from behind a pair of delicate, wire-framed glasses. He had an earpiece set into his left ear and a microphone in his hand, which he immediately raised to his lips upon our emergence.

"We are now coming to you live from the _Tachiagari_ library in Tokyo, which has become an unlikely scene of complete chaos!" He spun about, as though on a turntable and had the microphone hoisted so quickly into my vision that it very nearly lodged itself up my nose. "Excuse me? Are you gentleman the specialized SIT agents who stabilized the situation?"

Watari cleared his throat and pushed the microphone down and out of my face with the tip of one, (still rather blood stained) finger. His eyebrow was beginning to throb in that distinctive fashion indicating imminent trouble. "Do we _look _like SIT to you? Excuse us."

We tried to get around them but the reporters keep jostling in closer with their microphones shoving in at us from all directions. I was a little concerned that at any moment one of them would jab itself into an incredibly uncomfortable location.

"Would you care to clear it up for our viewers exactly what the situation is?" Came the voice of the same reporter. "The theory racing around at the moment is that each of the victims has been completely drained! Until now, only occult enthusiasts have acknowledged the vampire theory!"

I could feel anxiety welling up in my chest like so many layers of steel pressing one over the other onto my heart. The strain of the afternoon was finally taking its' toll on me and I felt expectantly sapped of all energy, unable to muster up even the most meager of reprimands.

"Please just… leave us alone…"

The reporter was not one to be dissuaded and even went so far as to follow us down the path leading away from the Tachiagari, avoiding Hisoka's patented glare, sometime akin to most individuals as dismissing genital Herpies. "And for an incident of this nature to occur at a library, of all places! We, the TBTN **(1)** would like to represent the citizens of this city and interview the three of you exclusively…"

Watari spun about, his fists clenched so tightly that his knuckles showed white between the gaps of his leather gloves. "Not meaning to be rude but… you _really _need to get the fuck out of our face-" His expression morphed instantly from cold ferocity to surprise, as the reporter was suddenly knocked sideways by someone administering a hearty clout the side of his face. As he toppled to the ground like a felled tree, the head of our department, Chief Konoe, moved into unobstructed view, massaging his knuckles and twisting his jaw from side to side in his usual, gruff display of aggravation.

"And there'll be worse if you continue to harass my agents, buddy." He growled, looking down at the plastic reporter with every trace of great dislike. "Now, take a hike."

The reporter spluttered pathetically, one hand clutching the already welling bruise on the side of his jaw. "A-ARE YOU CRAZY?! Yoshida! Did you get that on tape?"

Whether or not Yoshida had caught Konoe's display on tape soon proved to be irrelevant. Konoe struck out, one hand flattened; driving his stiffened fingers directly through the camera, sending up sparks as the internal wiring was destroyed. The cameraman shrieked and released the mangled camera, which Konoe dropped onto the ground and delivered a hearty stomp to its' already smoldering remains.

"I said, beat it!" He snarled, jabbing one thumb aggressively over his shoulder. "Don't make me repeat myself!"

The reporter scrambled to his feet, looking outright scandalized. "You can be sure your department will be hearing about this!" And with this parting shot, both he and the cameraman took off back towards the TBTN van that was parked not far from the Cutlass.

"Ha! Good luck with that!" Watari jeered, making a rude gesture behind the reporters back.

Konoe turned to us with a reposed sigh, raking blackened fingers back through his tousled head of hair.

"Goddamn paparazzi bastards. I was hoping I would get here before they started to give you boys grief." He looked us over one by one, with genuine fatherly concern. "You all OK?"

"Chief Konoe…" I said, feeling grateful to him beyond my weary ability to convey. I offered instead a bow, hoping it would supplement those words I was unable to provide at that particular time. "Thanks."

Rokuro Konoe had been the Summons Department Chief for almost as long as I had been employed there. I'd heard he was over two hundred years old, though he didn't care to confirm this for reasons that escape me. He was a little shorter than I was but stockier in frame, bearing the appearance of a muscular man gone somewhat to seed over the years. Considering that he was a black belt in more than several martial arts and had passed away in his late fifties, I suppose it shouldn't have surprised me. He had rather thick eyebrows, usually well-groomed hair of a salt and pepper shade and a weathered, yet charismatically handsome face. Though he could be a stern authoritarian in the workplace, I'd come to look to him as more of a father figure during my time spent in his employ. And I'm rather sure I'm not the first to think so either. Konoe trained me as a Shinigami and knew all about my past that led to my premature death so many years ago. I owed him a great debt, in more ways than one. It was his soft spot for me and his influence amongst the other high up's in Meifu that kept me from being fired countless of times. He was kind of gruff, much like an elderly military sergeant but he had a big heart and I think it's fair to say, an even bigger sweet tooth. We'd often come to blows' over food, sharing much the same taste in this area.

"Don't sweat it." Konoe replied in response to my demonstration of gratitude. "I gotta watch out for my employees, after all. Especially if I send them out for last minute overtime." He gestured with one worn hand to a refreshment area that had been conveniently set up behind the wall of ambulances attending the scene. "Let's grab some coffee."

We all headed towards the coffee table but were accosted on the way by a paramedic, who appeared almost desperate to be of some use to us.

"Excuse me, you're the guys who entered the building before, right?" He was just about slathering for an excuse to patch at least somebody up that night. What, did these guys have a quota or something? "You should probably come on over and get your injuries che-" He took a second between babbling to actually visually evaluate us and seemed naturally surprised by what he saw. "Well that's weird… it doesn't seem as though you have ANY injuries…"

"Why should that seem strange?" Hisoka questioned, almost challengingly.

"Yeah, it's not like we're incompetent or anything." Watari retorted, with an offended huff. I laughed, trying to hide my embarrassment of their behaviour.

"But thanks anyway! We'll let you know if we need a checkup!"

The Paramedic nodded, seemingly stumped that for all the blood on our clothes we seemed to have not sustained so much as a graze within the library. (Little did he know.) He ambled back amongst the throng of ambulances, mumbling in bemusement to himself as he went. Watari grinned, hands on his hips as he looked about the front yard in an interested way.

"Tell ya what, boys; we're popular tonight! I think this is the most underhanded publicity the Summons Section has ever got! Think we'll be on TV?"

"Not with Mr. Konoe around." I answered with a small smile.

"Come on boys; show some hustle." Konoe called from over by the coffee station. We made our way over and as soon as we each had a steaming cup of caffinated beverage in our hands, I took it upon myself to fill Mr. Konoe in on just what had happened inside of the library.

"… and that's everything." I concluded, draining the last dregs of coffee from the Styrofoam container. Watari had already gone for another refill and Hisoka was searching through the refreshment stand supplies for tea bags.

"I see…" Konoe murmured, examining the writing pad into which Watari had written his decoded message. "Does this mean anything to any of you?" He asked, waving it about in our faces.

Watari shrugged as he returned with his second steaming cup, which looked suspiciously devoid of milk. I suppose he was trying to prevent himself from becoming fatigued. "Not at the moment. It sounds to me as though whoever wrote it was trying to warn us that something bad is coming."

Konoe swatted him on the head with the notepad. "Well, even _I _can interpret that much." He said gruffly. "Why couldn't they have just written what they mean instead of being so damn cryptic?"

"World we live in, boss." Watari muttered, rubbing his head. "Whoever left the note may have been trying to get around some sort of gag order. Demons have been known to tongue tie those in their service. Literally, that is."

Hisoka held up the book in which the message was conveyed, displaying the title for our convenience. "_Recount of the Infernal Squalor.' _A semi-fictional work, theorizing the existence of a conjectural _Otherworld_, demonic figures and humanities true origins."

I raised my brow as I looked over the plain black covering and the obscure symbol beneath the title. "How did you know all that? Have you read it before, Hisoka? _Doesn't sound like light-reading…_"

"I had a quick look on the library catalogue system, while we conducted our final sweep of the building." Hisoka said, flipping through the books pages and curling his lip. "It's certainly _not _light reading. And the author seems unusually passionate about such an obscure topic, as though he knows more about it than he's letting on."

"According to him, humans are a race entirely separate from all other organic organisms on earth and that on a cellular level, we have more in common with parasites." Watari explained, shaking his head as though utterly bemused by the driveling pursuits of others. He was certainly not one to be judging. "The unsubstantiated and uninspiring work of a bloke who has far too much time on his hands."

"This coming from the fellow whose life work is to create a sex-change potion." I reminded him, not content to let him get away with that kind of hypocrisy.

Watari however refused to buy into it. "_That_ has some sort of basis for use, at least." He blithely insisted. Hisoka and I just exchanged a look but neither one of us chose to pursue the argument any further. "This _book_, on the other hand, has no factual foundation behind it."

"I checked it out." Hisoka informed Mr. Konoe, holding up a library slip that he himself had filled out. God bless the boy, he had even gone so far as to enter his name and (fake) details into the Library computer. Never mind that all but one member of the staff was now deceased; Hisoka wasn't about to compromise his moral standards for anything. Tough though the boy pretended to be, he was truly a good and noble person at heart. "Not sure how much use it's going to be in the long run but I thought it was better if we at least had it on hand."

Konoe inclined his head reverently. "That was good thinking on your part, Kurosaki." He sighed, glancing back towards the library. The flashing lights of the surrounding police vehicles threw shadows beneath the craggy lines in his face, making him look even more old and tired than he truly was. Mr. Konoe may have been an elderly man but he had the verve and energy of someone at least a quarter of his age. It was easy, as such, to forget just how many centuries had passed since he _had _actually been a young man himself. "It's a shame… but I think this show was well and truly over before the three of you even got here. The Ministry will have another team run cleanup." He reached around to pat both Watari and I on the shoulders. "I appreciate you both taking the time to come down here."

"Well, what's a dead guy to do?" Watari said with his usual, cocky wink. I still felt uneasy however.

"Wait… that's just it then?" I asked, following Mr. Konoe over to a white van, which had transported the Ministries backup forces to location. "No further investigation necessary?"

"Not by our department." Konoe explained, moving aside as a body was carried on a hand held gurney towards the rear of the van for inspection by the medicinal personal. Konoe lifted the white sheet covering the corpses face and sighed for the travesty of what had afflicted these unfortunate mortals before their untimely demise. It was the bearded man I had euthanized on the ground floor. "My God… it really did a number on them, didn't it?" He lowered the sheet back into place and gestured for the ministry staff to carry on. He turned to face me, smiling understandingly. "You can write up your report tomorrow and forward it off to the head office, along with any samples Watari might have gathered. Let them decide if they wish to examine it more closely. That's… really all you can do, now. Let's hope this is the last we hear of it."

I shook my head, simply unable to rest easy with what had happened that night. So much remained unanswered… and so much of it was personal! This wasn't just a case of cut and dry; why couldn't the Chief see that? "I just… don't understand. All those people… there's gotta be something more we can do!"

"Hey, Tsuzuki. I know this has got you really bent outta shape but come on…" Watari murmured, coming up behind me and laying his hand upon my shoulder. "You gotta learn when to let stuff go or it'll eat ya up. Head office will let us know if there's anything else we can do. And until that happens, try not to stew on it or you'll just end up with a big hole in your guts."

"He's right." Konoe said, looking quite relieved that he was getting some support at last. "You did a damn good job in there today." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "I'll finish up here. You boys head off and take some time for yourselves. I'll see you first thing tomorrow for the staff breakfast." And before I could say another word, he was walking away towards the milling police officials, whose memories were currently being authenticated for the purpose of concealing the Ministries involvement. Watari groaned as he stretched his arms up above his head, stretching out cramped and no doubt aching muscles.

"Cheers Chief." He groaned, rolling his head about in order to relieve the tension. He turned on me with a wild grin. "Well, well, looks as though I'm well on the way to being taken seriously around here."

I looked at him strangely as we made our way back over to where the car was parked, wondering still how he could remain so light hearted after taking a veritable walk through Hell. "Watari… I've never known you to be so insecure. Is this a new development?"

Watari shrugged as he fished around in his pockets for his keys. "It just keeps me trying hard, no harm in that."

"You gonna be joining us for dinner tonight, Watari-san?" Hisoka asked, leaning back against the passenger side door, arms tightly crossed. "I've found some really nice snapper I'm planning to fry up." He always insisted on doing the cooking whenever we had dinner. I'm not sure why exactly and believe you me; I've offered plenty of times.

"Ooh, that does sound tempting, kid… But I'll have to pass." Watari said with a grin, hoisting the keys out of his trouser pocket before then taking them around to the back of the car and unlocking the boot. "I got my own dinner plans to be gettin' to."

"Yeah, about that… you might wanna change first…" I drawled, looking at his tattered, blood stained pant legs as they pressed against the back of the car. I heard Watari laugh from somewhere deep in the recesses of the trunk.

"Hey, whatta you-a-talkin about!? Ripped denim is bangin'!"

"Yeah, if you're eighteen, maybe!"

Hisoka looked very surly all of a sudden and too late I remembered that he _was_ in fact eighteen.

"And what exactly do you mean by saying that, Tsuzuki?"

"Oh, nothing!" I insisted, scratching the back of my head nervously. Hisoka had beaten me for less in the past and I hadn't yet reached the stage where I was numb to it. "Hey, Watari! You needing a lift anywhere?"

"Don't try and change the subject." Hisoka growled but thankfully the conversation moved on without him.

"Ah… no thanks." The blond said, slamming the boot shut and re-emerging with a plastic bag stuffed with some neatly folded items of clothing. So he _had _come prepared for any eventuality. "I think I'll drop you guys back at the _Sakura Zensen_ and walk to the restaurant from there. I'm sure it'll be all right if I return the car first thing tomorrow morning."

"Oh, come on!" I cried. "That arrangement is _totally _awkward, even to my ears! Just let me drive. It's not that far!"

Watari growled at me. "Tsuzuki, you're not good with anything mechanical. Remember when Tatsumi tried to teach you to drive the all-purpose SUV? You kept panicking and pulling on the handbrake."

"Well it's a good thing I did; those newspaper stands weren't even slowing me down."

Hisoka laughed softly to himself and I turned on him like a shark smelling blood in the water.

"Hey, what are _you _laughing about? You don't have a license either."

"At least I'm learning." Hisoka shot back with an irritatingly smug look on his face. "I've got some hours up."

"Really?" Watari said, looking interested. " Well, in that case, we'll pop up the L plates and _you _can drop me off at the restaurant, bon." My mouth dropped open as he tossed the keys to Hisoka, casual as you please and proceeded to sift through the glove compartment for the L-plate decals supplied to ever Ministry vehicle.

"You trust him more than you trust _me_?" I said, feeling rather hurt.

Watari made no bones about it. "Damn straight."

I swatted at his head as he climbed into the backseat of the car with the bag of clothes he was intending to change into before buckling into the passenger seat myself. Hisoka slid into the drivers' side, taking a moment to adjust the seat before then starting the engine and slowly backing out of the crowded car park. Under Watari's careful tutelage, he nosed the car back into the mainstream Tokyo traffic and we drove into the night, leaving the horrors of the Tachiagari behind us.

"So, who is this date with anyway, Watari-san?" Hisoka asked, after we had driven in silence for some minutes.

"Oh, just some guy…" Watari commented airily. I could see him in the rearview mirror, struggling into a tight black turtleneck t-shirt, using another piece of clothing and a bottle of water to scrub the blood from his face and neck. Standard Shinigami procedure.

"What, you don't even know his name?" I asked skeptically.

Watari tossed some hair out of his eyes as he pushed his arms through the shirtsleeves and started undoing the button and zipper on his jeans. "I've wanted to go to this new restaurant for ages and since this guy seemed pretty eager for a date, I thought it would be a good opportunity to check it out."

"Is it that new theater restaurant you were telling me about?" I asked, remembering an article he'd shown me in one of the local tourist magazines promoting theme restaurants and the like.

Watari nodded as he wriggled and shimmied his way out of the ripped jeans.

"Mmmhmm. Got _The Tempest _playing tonight."

Hisoka looked over his shoulder to check if the lane beside us was clear and then twisted the wheel gently in order to merge. Having successfully completed this maneuver, he glimpsed in the rear view mirror with a raised brow. "Watari-san… correct me if I'm wrong but… don't you _hate _the theater?"

Watari chuckled dryly. "You got that right… the cocktail list is supposed to be excellent though." I heard a rustling sound, so I gathered that he was stuffing the crumpled, blood stained jeans into the garbage bag. "I dunno… I've felt compelled to go there for ages but just never sort of got around for it. Tonight's date was just the excuse I needed."

"Just don't let the Chief find out." Hisoka warned, shifting gears with such an obvious lurch that I had to wonder whether he was double jointed. "You know the Ministry's policy on 'hanky-panky'."

Glancing in the rear view mirror, I saw Watari give an evil smile as he tossed a couple of aspirin into his mouth and chewed on them. He wasn't trying to appear tough in doing so because I saw him visibly gag at the taste and not bother to follow up with a gulp of the bottled water beside him. I'd heard that some individuals, who were recovering from chemical addictions and even alcoholics, often become adversely addicted to the taste of chewed Aspirin, as a means of assuaging their cravings. But of course, I was ignorant to Watari's circumstances and ultimately; it was not that important to dwell upon, especially when considered in light of the dozens of deaths we'd witnessed that night.

"I know I've never followed it." Watari was saying as he clumsily slid down into a pair of tight black jeans, giving a persuasive wriggle here and there in order to make them fit. "But that's just between us fellas, ne?" He reminded, holding a finger up to his lips. I sighed, sliding the _fuda _paper out of my pocket and flipping through them to see how many total I would need to replace.

"You'll get caught one day Watari and then you're going to cop it." I said, half-hoping it _would _happen, just so he could learn a lesson. "It sounds as though you're not even really into this guy. If you're not interested, why bother?"

"That's right." Hisoka concurred. It was very rarely that we agreed on something but when it came to ethics and morals, we were usually on the same page. "Wouldn't it be better to find just one compatible person you'd be happy with on a long term basis?"

Watari finished changing and took a deep gulp of his water, swallowing with a visible wince on his features. "There's no long term when it comes to the Shinigami, kid. Think what falling in love would be like knowing that they would grow old and die before you? Could _you_ guys knowingly do that to yourselves? To someone else?"

He made a very good point and something we immortals were always loathe to discuss. Many a time has a Shinigami wasted away from mental and emotional anguish because they had fallen in love with a mortal, whom they were destined to watch die. Sometimes, on the rarest of occasions, a Shinigami might strike a deal with Enma; that they be permitted to return to the mortal life and live out their remaining days with their lover. But those that choose to do so do not return to the service of the Ministry of Hades and possibly, if you are to believe the rumors, forfeit their soul to the Lord of Hades himself.

There are many reasons's why Shinigami are not allowed to engage in 'hanky panky', to use Chief Konoe's own, oft-repeated words. Primarily, it is because Shinigami are the dead reborn and to engage with the living in a sexual manner, dances that very fine, dangerous line into necrophilia. Also, as I mentioned previously, there is that very small issue of the Shinigami being forced to watch their loved one die, which can lead to them wasting away in agonizing, ceaseless anguish. Additionally, if the love is strong enough, a Shinigami might be tempted to barter with their soul, as a means through which to return to mortal life and remain with their lover. And it was not always to Lord Enma whom these desperate individuals might go. A soul is not something to be offered lightly.

Penalties for interfering with the life choices of a mortal were dealt with both swiftly and severely. I had seen Shinigami stripped of their jobs, titles and right to remain as a passenger between worlds. Was it ever worth the risk?

We'd like to think so. We need to be loved, just like anyone else.

"It's hard to believe that there's _no one _special…" I queried, finding it awfully sad just how restricted we were in our rights to do nothing so much as _feel_ for another.

Watari grinned slyly. "They're _all _special."

Hisoka groaned, taking Watari's comment at face value. "That's not what we mean."

Watari laughed gently, sinking back into the leather seat behind him and gingerly dabbing cologne onto his pulse points. "I do admit; there is someone I think about more than anyone else… that must be special. Not that I'll ever tell you guys about it." He added as I spun about so quickly that I almost put my neck out of joint.

"Oh, you can't just leave it at that!" I insisted, shocked and amused by the small pink flush that had sprouted on the blonds' cheeks. I'd rarely heard Watari speak of someone with such a romantic nuance! "Come on; tell us! Don't be such a tease!"

A cloud of sweet smelling mist suddenly obscured my vision and I shut my eyes, spinning about to protect myself from the defensive burst of cologne Watari had unleashed upon me. "It's no one you know, _nosy_. No one I really know either, come to think of it…" I stared at him through watery eyes, confused by his words. "Besides… it's not someone I'd ever have a chance with…"

"Watari-san… you're very insecure lately…" Hisoka commented, watching as a motorcycle cop went weaving by in the neighboring lane. I had a vague, sneaking suspicion that he was watching us but when I looked again, he was staring straight ahead, indicating to turn off down a right hand street. I glanced at his back, as we sailed past, feeling an odd sense of de ja vu stir in my guts but having nothing more to base it on than that original nagging sensation.

"It's strange, I know." Watari said, breaking me out of my musings. "Believe it or not, I do know my limitations, bon, much more than most folks give me credit for." He leaned forward between the drivers and passengers seats and pointed out the windscreen. "It's the next left."

Hisoka obediently steered the car down the left hand lane, emerging into a hustling, restaurant district not five blocks from where our apartment building was situated. I recognized the sign for our favorite watering hole as we sailed past and wasn't at all surprised to find the place already packed.

"But isn't it better to be with the person you have true feelings for, rather than just settling?" Hisoka said, refusing to let up on this point. He seemed entirely set on reforming Watari's casual ways before the blond was shot of us for the night.

Unbelievably enough, the kids' words seemed to be having some effect. Watari's expression became rather dour, his eyes taking on that familiar, regretful caste I had only moments ago witnessed. It was wrong to assume for a moment that a Shinigami, despite appearances, is coping with their lot. It was at times a loveless, thankless, bitter existence. And not even Watari could pretend that it didn't wear the slightest bit thin.

"Maybe in the cartoons, kid." He finally said, giving me an apologetic look, as though he need be contrite for succumbing to this momentary self-pity! "This is real life, unfortunately. 'Sides…" The corners of his mouth hitched upward into that trademark roughish grin and the last traces of that pitiful visage evaporated entirely. "You don't see me exactly miserable, do ya?"

I laughed. "No, sir! Not our Watari!"

We pulled up the restaurant just as another car was pulling out. Hisoka slid neatly into the vacated spot and allowed the engine to idle whilst Watari pulled his gear together. He reached for the passenger side door but went no further, his fingers lax upon the lever.

"Everything okay?" I asked, spotting an anxious looking guy standing outside the doors, looking back and forth urgently as though expecting someone. I gathered this must have been the man Watari was seeing tonight and if appearances were anything to judge by, it would have been cruel to keep him waiting a second longer. The poor fellow was practically working himself into a lather!

Watari seemed deep in thought as he swiveled about to face me. From his expression, I gathered he was having a hard time putting his thoughts into words. "… The library tonight… that was one Hell of an incident, don't you think?"

"Probably the biggest we've seen since Kyoto, I would say." Hisoka agreed, examining a spot on his chin in the rearview mirror. Being stuck in puberty must have been a real drag sometimes. "I don't think the total body count has yet been determined."

"Obvious it was significant though." I stated, resting my elbow on the windowsill and setting my fingers against the side of my face. I still couldn't shake the image of the reanimated bodies from my minds eye. It sure as shit wasn't the first time I had come face to face with a zombie but this was certainly the very first instance where I had sensed some form of intelligent evil surfacing beneath the corroded flesh of the wasted body. It was unnerving.

"Tsuzuki… don't you feel like…" Watari paused, looking embarrassed by whatever it was he had been about to say.

"Like what?" I pressed impatiently.

"Like, we were being watched today. In the library, I mean."

I examined the blood caked beneath my nails, starting working them out with the head of a small pencil lead I kept in my upper pocket. "Given the situation, I should think that's a fairly safe assumption. Why do you ask?"

Watari bit his lip, glancing out the window as though he were expecting something to appear in the street beyond. "There was a strange feeling I had. … Nostalgic. Like old wounds lain bare."

Hisoka exchanged a look with me that seemed to suggest Watari was losing his nerve. "That's a bit of a strange thing to say, Watari-san…"

Watari gave a grudging smile and laughed at himself. "Yeah, I guess it is. It's just the feeling I got, is all." He made to get out but I reached out to grab his bare wrist, suddenly understanding just where he was coming from.

"No, I know what you mean." I confessed, recalling that earlier sense of reminiscence I'd felt even before entering the library. All day it had assailed me. "I felt that way too… as though old feelings I had a long time ago were rising to the surface." I rubbed a hand over my forehead, weary then, more than I had been when I was fighting for my life. "The whole atmosphere was just… oppressive. The saddest memories and emotions kept taking over. You felt like you could burst from it after a while." I wanted to shrug it off but it continued to nag at me, like a tiny splinter of glass buried beneath the skin, digging ever gradually deeper. "But after that guy in the hood left… it was kind of like he took the bad feeling with him. Know what I mean?"

Watari groaned, raking his fingers back through his hair. "I don't think we could ever really explain it but yeah, I get where you're coming from." With a reposed smile, he leaned between the seats again and drew both Hisoka and I under his arms. He gave us a tight squeeze. "Well, food for thought anyway. Let's not worry about it unless we got to." He released us and jerked his thumb back over his shoulder. "Now, if you'll excuse me, romance awaits! You two have a nice, relaxing night. Bon," Here, he pointed at Hisoka. "Do _not_ let this silly old man stew in his juices. I don't care if you have to tip sake down his throat until his back teeth float, he's not to chew himself up over this!"

"I'll keep that in mind, Watari-san." Hisoka said, looking amused. I, on the other hand, felt rather insulted that Watari felt I needed to be cared for like a doddery old fool who ate food straight out of the blender.

"Watari!" I growled, all too tempted to jump out of the car and go tell his date several unsavory things about Watari's character. But the blond merely winked in my direction, saying without words that he meant no harm.

"I'll see ya tomorrow for breakfast. Try not to eat your contribution before it makes it to the table, Tsuzuki!" Before I could retort to this rather unnecessary jibe, Watari swiftly swung his legs out of the car and waved to us and he walked by past the drivers' side window. "Sayonara!"

"'Night." Hisoka replied colorlessly. I leaned over him in order to parade my middle finger up and down, much to the obvious shock of a middle-aged dear standing nearby.

"Have fun!" I called in a cheerful tone, contrary to the time hearted gesture of disapproval I directed at my friend. Hisoka pulled away from the curb before further damage could be done and five minutes later, we had pulled into the Ministry's garage. We made our way back to the _Sakura Zensen _Ministry apartment complex by foot.

Dinner was a solemn affair. I just couldn't get the nights events out of my mind. Hisoka made idle conversation for the sake of filling the void but gave up after a while and simply sat, picking at the remains of his snapper and casting sad, furtive glances out the window. I think he too was demoralized by what he had seen. Death, no matter how accustomed you think you've become to it, _always _has an effect on you. The needless taking of so much life makes you wonder just what the Underdwellers have against the human race and why they feel the need to persecute us so.

Even knowing now brings me little solace for all that I have seen come to pass. The death of women, children, men, animals, the ungodly mutation and indeed _invasion _of their corpses reeked of decimation of the highest order. It dredged up old memories, memories of the time Muraki had been a major part of our afterlives and without even really thinking about it, I found myself gazing at that moon again. Wondering as I did, when it would next turn to blood.

_**~ EC ~**_

**TBTN: **The Tokyo Bay Television Network. A fictional television station. … I hope.

**A/N: **Yay, part six finished! Part seven is the revised chapter content for chapter three of Dark Adaptation, which I'll also post here. Please R and R if you have enjoyed this and looking forward to seeing you all in part 7!


	7. And so bled the Blood Red Moon

**Dark Adaptation – Dead Men Working.**

**DISCLAIMER: **Yami no Matseui and its' affiliated characters, concepts and locations belong to Yoko Matsushita and I am earning nothing but the sole satisfaction of telling this story to you fine people.

**A/N: **Well, I wasn't planning on doing any more writing for some time but since this is already written, I thought I might as well whack it up. Just the rewrite of the original chapter three, slightly better than the original. Hope whomever reads it enjoys it!

**~ X ~**

_"__My soul is full of whispered song;  
My blindness is my sight;  
The shadows that I feared so long  
Are all alive with light…"_  
~**Alice Cary, **_**Dying Hymn**_

**~ X ~**

**And so Bled the Red Moon. **

**Tsuzuki**

One a.m, the same night as the Tachiagari incident and I was where every sane immortal was at this ungodly time; out on the town.

In an attempt to put the sordid situation out of my mind, I was doing a bit of good old fashioned bar-hopping. Sometimes, for a moment or so, I'd manage to put things aside for long enough to subside my feelings of guilt. Guilt for my past misfortunes, accidents I'd been unable to prevent, people I'd been unable to protect...

It's ironic Muraki... that you can blame Saki for forfeiting any rights you have to find peace in even the most mandatory of activities, when you have done the very same to me. As a result of your presence in my afterlife, all the disappointments I had once been able to reign in became that much more difficult to control. I found myself getting agitated over even the tiniest things.

Hisoka, my own partner was as supportive as I would expect in this time of trial for me. But his lack of social skills and disassociation meant that he was unable to fully sympathize with the trauma I experienced when faced with what stirred so continuously inside of me. This darkness... perhaps the very same thing that Saki awoke in you all those years ago... Muraki.

The demon half of me. The part of me I've been running from all these years. Nearly one century has passed since the moment I first declared that my life would be dedicated to an eternity of evasion from the shadow in my soul that despaired in a dark squalor for life and blood.

Perhaps the reality is... is that I will never escape it. That another century will come to pass and I will still be running. And my heart will be forever in turmoil.

Kind of a depressing thought, huh?

The other agents had tried to be sympathetic after Kyoto. Tatsumi was thoughtful and gentle, making certain that I was fully aware of his support whenever I should have need of it. Mr. Konoe was nice too. He gave me a pay rise and I made short work of it at the next Cinnapon sale, which took my mind off matters for at least a little while.

A pat on the back. A whispered word of comfort or even an embrace, so that I knew that everyone was thinking of me. That I was still valued and appreciated and no one wanted to see me turn and walk away in a clouded aura of depression and hopelessness.

I did appreciate that. But... though I understood completely that everyone was there for me, I still could not shake those awful feelings. I'd been forgiven. I'd been accepted back into the arms of my friends and colleagues and remedied with the soft comfort of mortal words, physical contact and the glancing smile.

But I was not a mortal.

I'm not even entirely human.

And whilst my friends and colleagues were willing to accept me for who they thought me to be, the part they had seen erupt in Kyoto, the demon half, was something they wanted to forget. To sweep under the carpet. Because _I _wanted to forget about it too.

But no matter how much I wanted to push it aside and ignore its' presence, the fact to that matter was that I was part demon, no different to the creature who had caused that bloodied devastation within the Tachiagari. I had seen that horror… and I have _exacted _that same horror, even if I cannot remember it.

There had only been one single being I had known in a century long existence, whom had accepted both parts of me. Who had allowed the demon half some kind of peace and reciprocation, some acknowledgement. Whether I wanted to forget or not, there was no denying that half of me yearned for this creature that dared to admit its' existence when no other, not even the human part of me, dared to do so.

Yes Muraki. That creature was you. You don't have to look so smug about it either.

_The Red Moon's Calamity… _Isn't that what Dr. Squirrel called you? And what a calamity you were! What a tragedy, what a mystery… what an _obscurity_…

Kazutaka Muraki. A surgeon employed in Tokyo General, the central Metropolitan hospital. I had first met him three years ago, when I'd been sent out to investigate vampiric disturbances in my charge of Nagasaki.

He had turned up out of the blue; a tall, sophisticated man dressed all in white from head to toe. I'd been tending to a small child that had collapsed from what we assumed at the time was apparent heat stroke and Muraki deigned to provide assistance. I'd been appreciative of his attentions at the time and couldn't fail to notice that he had flirted with me, which had both interested and flattered me, being that he was a handsome, well to do gentleman.

But it turned out that he was far from a compassionate person. Through my investigation I found out that Dr. Kazutaka Muraki, the visiting Tokyo physician, had orchestrated the vampire murders, as a means of drawing me to him. He himself was a psychic vampire, who supped on spiritual energy and he siphoned the souls of the dead, killed by a revived girl named Maria Wong; a Hong Kong singing sensation whom had taken her own life out of despair. And if that weren't enough, Muraki unashamedly confided in me that he had been the one responsible for the death of my partner, Hisoka Kurosaki.

When Hisoka had been thirteen, he witnessed one of Muraki's murders and saw his face. In what he classified as a case of 'artistic genius', Muraki caught the innocent child, marked him with a curse through the act of raping him and watched over him in the hospital, supping his energy little by little, so that the boys final few years were spent in never ceasing pain and suffering.

Muraki had conducted the Nagasaki murders, in order to meet me. It soon became apparent that he was obsessed with me, though I never truly found out how he'd learnt of my existence in the first instance. Why, I had been dead long before he had even been born into this world.

Long story short, Hisoka and I managed to put an end to his activities and light on out of Nagasaki, liberating the soul of the manipulated Maria Wong in the process. But it was not the last we had seen of Kazutaka Muraki. We met him again on a cruise liner, the _Queen Camellia,_ which was being used as a floating organ bank, where illegal organ transplants were conducted outside the jurisdiction of both Japan and China. Many people had been kidnapped and slain, their organs harvested for the use of the rich and the wealthy; those who refused to wait for available, legal donors. Muraki had naturally been involved with the scheme but had very cleverly outsmarted us until the very end, seeing every last person who knew of his agenda murdered by the hands of yet another of his puppets, before blowing the ship up and slipping through our fingers once again.

Unbelievably, there had been a moment on the _Queen Camellia_, when I came dangerously close to allowing myself to be seduced by Muraki. He had been poisoned and we assumed he was dead but his high tolerance to toxins allowed him to decrease his bodily functions to the lowest degree and concentrate on healing. To acquire more energy, he attacked me in the cargo hold, attempting to feed off of me. I managed to fight him off but his attentions did not cease with his hunger. He whispered to me with provocative, seductive words, strumming my lip with his finger, pushing me down onto the floor with no resistance from myself, wound our fingers together, touched my mouth with his own. I'd had no real experience with such matters, with being seduced and it was somehow both revolting and completely exciting. I thought that he meant to have me, right there on the floor and I wonder to this very day, if I might have let him, should he have persisted. He was so… forthright. So full of passion and lust. I'd never had that before… to be sought so ferociously.

And then came Kyoto…

Sometimes I'd find myself dreaming about him. Not nightmares as you would expect after the events one year ago but visions of a more... sedate and gentle nature. There is something inside of me that remains hopeful, despite knowing full well the lies and deceit you fed to me since the moment I first met you. When I... dreamed of you, Muraki, you came to me as a being prepared to repent for his crimes and dedicate your life to rectifying all that you had come into contact with. In my arrogance, I believed it was a promise you made with the sole purpose of gaining my trust. You extended good will in order to see me smile, to make me happy.

"_Tsuzuki-san, I vow never to act in a way that would dishearten you,"_ You would say as you straightened your glasses in that way you always do. _"I have no desire to see you saddened."_

Then I would smile and in that bizarre way that dreams have, everything became all right and you were suddenly a person I could trust. I liked that feeling; thinking that you were someone that I could depend on to do the right thing by me. Believing that you cared enough about me, to want to become a better person for my sake because the only desire left in you was the same desire suspended in the demonic half of me.

I truly do not know which part of me was dreaming that dream.

The demon?

Asato Tsuzuki?

_Both?_

It was something I had thought about a lot, despite the stress it accorded me alongside my Shinigami duties. Sincerely, the human side of me wanted to believe in a good man named Kazutaka Muraki who saved lives rather than took them.

I've never been very good at thinking things through. I always expected too much of people. Expected that in heart, people are basically good and that evil is simply a word beyond mortal understanding and can never be entertained by humans. Evil was always such a demonic word.

There is no denying that Muraki did evil things. Things I fail to understand the reasoning behind and yet continually refuse to accord him the label as that of a conscious barren demon.

Why? I find that hard to rationalize myself. I cannot forgive him for these atrocious acts of murder and violation yet I am unable to call him evil.

Is it the predominant innocence in me, incapable of condemning someone with the harshest of accusations? Or could it be that I am simply loath to believe him evil, when this man was holding me in his arms and offering me intimacy in such a passionate and yet unobtrusive way? As up front as Muraki had been with his apparent desire, the ways in which he had expressed his affection had always been... alluring. Even when he had me pressed to the wall of the Queen Camellia having won my body in a game of Poker, the kisses he had trailed along my chin and neck were neither insistent nor forceful. They were an enticement. _'Come play,' _they seemed to say, those whispers of heat and wetness across my skin. _'I want you to enjoy this as much as I do.'_

'_Come play, Asato Tsuzuki…'_

The temptation I felt, lent to me a greater excuse to chastise myself. To forget. And were I to find momentary peace by drinking an entire bottle of Akita gin, then I would gladly do so.

That night however, I was out on my own.

I don't like drinking alone, especially on a Tuesday night when hardly anyone was out. It made me feel self conscious. I didn't have much of a choice however. Watari was out on his date and Hisoka had no interest in trolling the town after the night we'd had. I couldn't think of anyone else to call, nor could I really be bothered with trying. Maybe it was better that way; meant I wouldn't have to talk about the things I had seen that night.

Being alone didn't bother me as much as it should have, once I settled into the mood of things. I wandered down to the restaurant district, moving about the bars there. If I'd had a choice, I would have preferred Kanazawa for my night of alcohol based gluttony, a delightful castle town of winding alleys and expensive restaurants. I was very fond of the city, partly because I had a deep affinity for sight seeing, a habit of mine that has lingered since the days of my adolescence.

Kanazawa houses some of the finest old temples in Japan, including the well known Ninja temple built in 1958. Once, Watari and I had attempted to tiptoe through the temple only to find that it was riddled with secret passageways, long tunnels that meandered out into nothing, high ceilings and suicide rooms with, appropriately enough, no exit. Naturally we had been drunk at the time and after a good half hour of waddling about, hiccupping like frogs with indigestion, not only had we completely lost the entrance from which we came; we had completely lost each other. We thought it hilarious later, when we were sober but at the time it was nothing short of terrifying! Tatsumi was sent in to rescue us and in five minutes managed to do what we had been unable to in four hours. That being, retrieve our well pickled carcasses and drag us out of the temple proper. Watari had managed to wedge himself into a wall between the entrance room and a secret passage (How I don't know, even the temple staff couldn't figure it out.) whilst I was extracted from the corner of the suicide room, facing the wall and trying to convince myself that there had been a door there only a few seconds earlier.

Because of this, Kanazawa has held a very dear and near place in my heart (regardless of the expense) and I made it my business to make business whenever I had the chance. But it was simply too far out of my way that night and so I remained in Tokyo; with all my sad memories of the town to weigh me down.

After wandering through the restaurant district, taking in the sights and valorous scents and sounds, I made my way to a small and non-descript bar I had a habit of frequenting. Due to my love of sweets and somewhat tempestuous habit of…_ahem _spending my paycheck rather quickly, I had a responsibility to my begrudged self to proceed into the night with one word in mind: Cheap. This bar, whilst small, cozy and relatively friendly, was the quintessential economical, reasonably priced, easy on the pocket, simply put _cheap _establishment in this entire city. That and the place was always relatively empty. Unlike Watari I'm not booming with self confidence and I try to avoid the more rambunctious places unless I am in his company.

He was a swinger after all. That kind of lifestyle is more suited to him, rather than a Guardian like me, raised in the early 20th century.

I entered the bar and sidled up, all unobtrusive like to a well worn barstool in the far left corner. My pay packet hadn't been very generous lately, (business had been slow, what with all those damned medical advancements that extended everyone's life for a good twenty years or so) so I'd formulated a plan in my immortal mind, brilliant creature that I am. Ignoring the bartenders' impatient expression that insisted I either ordered something or at least assure him I wasn't ready to order and scanned the bar for prey.

It didn't take me too long to spot them. They always stand out like a sore thumb in my 'Freeloader radar' what with somewhat uncertain expressions usually angled towards the karaoke machine as another of their group belts out a robust version of a song by that American singer 'Madonna.' This particular individual seemed to be suffering from chronic stomach ache because he was hollering into the microphone with his face pursed up like he was sucking on a lemon.

College kids singing karaoke was like the Chinese Water torture; it slowly wears you down.

I decided to end everyone's suffering right there, performing a service of euthanasia if you would. Adopting my most pathetic and wide eyed expression, I simply got up from my stool and wandered over toward the stage, all purple eyed puppy innocence.

The college students immediately stopped to gape at me. The boy on stage ceased in his murderous onslaught, the microphone sliding from his grasp and leaving 'Madonna' to finish the performance by herself. I'm sure everyone was grateful.

"Excuse me!" I said, in what I hoped was suitably broken Japanese. It's more difficult than you would think; speaking your own language as though it is your second language. "I is wondering, is this being the place 'Hawaii Sun Bar,' yes? I canno not read the sign and I is very confused."

The college students appraised me as they might a small child. Having once been partnered with Tatsumi I had become accustomed to this type of treatment a long time ago.

Finally, one of the girls in the six person group plucked up the courage to address my dangerous self. I made a point of looking extra pathetic for her (and eventually my own) benefit.

"Are you American?" She asked in VERY LOUD AND VERY SLOW JAPANESE. Language between international countries seems to be established by this bizarre use of 'very loud and very slow' no matter what language you originally speak. It is like this unofficial rule or something. If you are very loud and very slow _everyone _will understand you.

I would like to point out here and now that as the most poorly gifted veteran of attempts to learn the English language, speaking 'VERY LOUD and very slow' does not help one tiny bit. My English arsenal is sparsely limited and seems to revolve around the topic of my shallow purse and eating. _'I have no money. Very little money. I am hungry.' _Also, I'm entirely Asian in appearance, so it was a ploy that didn't often work. Sometimes, it was worth trying just for the laugh it got.

"Yes. I am American," I replied, trying to speak Japanese with an American southern accent.

One of the older boys at the table raised an eyebrow. From that expression I would assume that he did not approve of me. Most Japanese do not approve of foreigners, _especially _those that don't look or sound foreign and are attempting to extort money from other people. I tried extra hard to look innocent and non-threatening.

"Can you say something in English, for us Gaijin-san?" He asked gruffly.

Oh shit. "I… um…" I cleared my throat and hoped to God it would come out fluent. "I HAVE NO MONEY! I AM HUNGRY!"

They all stared at me in silence for a moment and I was just on the verge of bowing and beseeching the twelve gods' that protect me, when one of the girls started giggling and clapping her hands together.

"That was amazing! What does that mean, Gaijin-san?" She asked, astounded by my profound skills in the English dialect.

"It means I am wondering if I can get a drink here? Long way from big America, you know!"

Voila. A little dishonesty on mine own behalf and I was provided with the first few drinks of the night, free of charge. Something else for me to feel guilty about naturally, but I decided to blame this one on Tatsumi for docking my pay in the first place. He was forcing me to take such measures. No one _asked _him to come and rescue Watari and me from the ninja temple. … Well, if you want to be literal about it, yeah okay, Konoe did, but _I _didn't, so there was no need to brutally slice numbers from my pay packet like some samurai assassin cutting down foes on the battlefield. I had learnt my lesson there in the corner of the Suicide room and attempting to drain my drinking income was not the way to go about it!

I waddled out of the bar at two o'clock in the morning, sloshed beyond gluttony and feeling well deserving of something sweet to sate my sudden, profound lack of energy. Unfortunately, as you would expect nothing was open at this time of night and my search for sugar came up as empty as my wallet. I wandered the darkened streets, watching lights go out in the rooms lining the walls like candles snuffed by the Counts fingers and tried to think of something to do. I was feeling very morose, despite the generous amount of alcohol sliding through my bloodstream like an insidious lovers hand, lulling me into a false sense of security.

As such, my thoughts turned to Muraki.

The white doctor had been incognito for the past year and rather than assure me in a resolute sense of finality, his quiet disappearance had only acted to further provoke my anxiety. I'd seen first hand that the doctor was unlikely to die with even the most astute of efforts taken to assure his demise. Even when I'd felt the penetration of the knife into his body, I think part of me had known even then, that that would never be enough to eradicate the undeniable Kazutaka Muraki.

Not an invincible man, but a man that had no intention of dying until it was in his own permission to do so. Something more powerful than my will, mortal frailty and all that made sense to me, was keeping him alive.

The marks on Hisoka's body proved that.

He was out there somewhere still. Waiting… waiting for another chance to move in, extend that hand, strike another down and then our game would begin afresh again.

'_Come play, Asato Tsuzuki.'_

I couldn't stand the inactivity. The fruitless, ceaseless waiting. As terrible as it may sound, I thought it may even be better should Muraki reappear. It was better to know, then to remain ignorant. I had even suggested pursuing him following Kyoto but the Judgment Bureau had established a decision to prevent any further involvement with Muraki. At least until he showed his face again.

Showed his face again… Literally, they meant of course. How can they account for his face as it reappears again and again to me, inescapable in my dreams every night? Can I not pursue him then, because he haunts my mind, chases my consciousness in circles so that every time I turn my shoulder I meet that silver gaze of his? Those cold eyes… cold eyes of a brutal murderer, a title he was unafraid to give himself and yet at the same time, he could look at me with such desire and passion…

Was this want for me, this_ passion _for me, nothing more than an obsession of a man as unwavering as his lust for the one other thing that escaped him?

Vengeance?

If it too can be called an obsession, then I have no doubt in my mind that Muraki will return for me. He spent 17 years searching for his path to avenge the dearest thing he ever lost, an obsession to enact his revenge.

How many years will he obsess for me? How many years has he _already _obsessed for me?

How many years will it take before he finally begins to see the fruits for that obsession? He is a languorously patient man, as I have seen time and time again. I doubt that this little setback will afford him too much at all.

Until he did return to fulfill his obsession however, I continually found myself glancing over my shoulder, expecting to meet that silvery stare suspended above the familiar wisp of a smile.

Just as I see it in my dreams.

Unlike my dreams however, I cannot convince myself that the man who has killed so many, the man whom lusts after me for a reason I cannot even begin to fathom, the man who verily taketh life as soon as save it…

… I cannot see that man denouncing the life that provides him with so much satisfaction. A life without guilt, without reason for guilt. Rationality beyond mortal conception in which the taking of human life is not a sin any more so than possessing violet colored eyes.

I passed a man on the corner of the main road. He was staggering and obviously a tad more drunk than I was. His tie hung at half mast and his blurry eyes struggled like an elderly man with arthritis to focus on me. I'm sure even when he did, he was seeing four of me anyway.

"All alone tonight?" He asked, well _leered _at me.

"Yeah…" I replied as I continued across the road, chin pressed to my chest as a shield against the cold wind and the harsh candor of his words. "All alone tonight."

Even when I'm sober, sometimes I cannot help but entertain the naïve and mortal procrastination, when someone hits me with a sharp and painful point like this. The obvious realization that I didn't _have _to be alone. I'm a shy man and it is this fact, more so than any other, that sees me 'all by myself' more often than not. I'm afraid of approaching people because of the fear that they might shun me, as though they have some perception ahead of time, the kind of person that I am.

The one assurance I do have, the one I always think of when I feel in need of some boost in self confidence, horribly enough, is Muraki.

As frail and human as I am, there is a part of me that reaches for even the slightest self-assurance from time to time. Something to prove that I am an acceptable creature, that I can be seen as beautiful in somebody else's eyes.

"_At first I thought just watching you was enough… but then… …no. I ached to _touch…"

In Muraki's eyes, in the eyes of that brutal serial killer—

"_-and now… I want you so _badly._"_

- I was beautiful.

And as selfish as it may seem, I liked it. In my heart of hearts, how I hate to admit it, I liked that I could always count on Muraki to see me in a positive light. Even when I failed to see it myself, a creature or darkness perceived me as being… perfect.

I'd spent a lifetime searching for one single person to accept me for all that I was. Everything that made up me; Asato Tsuzuki to the smallest cell, the blink of my eyelashes, the intake of a breath.

In all that I was, be it good or bad, Muraki desired me.

Wanted me.

I didn't have to be alone. Not that night, not any night. In the absence of friends, I could have stepped into the nightmare and entered into Muraki's dream. Fallen into his arms and found acceptance and passion beyond guilt, mortal regret and the thoughts that sent me reeling through bar after bar, searching for an escape. An outlet.

A door I could have sworn was once there.

Bitter at the tangle of my thoughts, I changed my course and wandered deeper into the city's heart, looking for bright lights and people. It was late though and the only people I came across were other drunks like me. I staggered into one emerging from a big, brazen bar in on of the main streets and we shared an impromptu introduction.

"HELLO!" He bellowed at me. I was three feet away.

"Hi!" I said, equally as exuberant. "I haven't been to bed yet!"

We both agreed that this was a stellar achievement and warmly shook one another's hands. This was clearly the greatest moment of his life. We promised to stay good friends always and send postcards and all that, before veering off on our separate ways. The man had a rosy complexion and rough hands and that is all I can remember. Undoubtedly all he can recount of me today is a tall man with eyes the color of gay pride.

A million lives I pass every day, mere glimpses into a photo album of sunsets and thousands more faces and smiles I will never set eyes on. The truth was; I would never send this man a postcard. I would never know his name. We were simply two strangers, drunk on life and regret, passing one another on a dying street, clutching desperately at one another's hands as fleeting as straws.

Transience. Mortality. All that comes must go. A life represented by a single candle, burnt down to the wick exemplifies all existence disappearing into darkness. As the candle burns, nothing is left behind. Nothing but memories, brief glimpses and a shady recollection of various features; here a rosy face, there a violet eye.

I should have drunk more that night.

By two thirty-five I was running out of steam. I started ducking into various cheap love hotels and checking for Watari's name on the register in case he had gotten lucky that night. Having failed to see any evidence of his presence at the places I entered, I began peeking into parked car windows, searching for his distinct wavy blonde hair. Once I had been chased off by several unappreciative couples, I collapsed by a lamp post, thoroughly exhausted of society in general. Several clusters of stars winked at me through gaps in the clouds, the clouds that suddenly registered my presence and decided I didn't look nearly miserable enough. An overweight raindrop struck me on the nose, followed by another. And then, another. Soon the rain was pelting down and when I tried to run and take shelter, I tripped on the gutter and landed face down in a puddle.

Could death get any better than this?

"Dammit all!" I bellowed; surfacing from the puddle and spitting dirty brown water in all directions. My entire face was streaked with mud; rain ran rivulets down from my sodden hair. I was just on the verge of telling the entire world where it could go, when my mobile phone rang.

My eyes widened considerably and I checked my watch. It was three-fifty, an ungodly hour. Who in Hades could be calling this early? Shrugging, I dragged myself to my feet and shuffled under the balcony of a nearby supply shop, only then retrieving the peeping phone from my jacket pocket. The number was unfamiliar, so it couldn't have been Tatsumi, Hisoka or Watari.

Curious, I pushed the receive button and held the phone up to my ear, plugging the other one with my index finger in an attempt to block out the sound of the rain.

"Hello?"

There was no reply. I struggled desperately to hear a sound; someone breathing at the very least but there was nothing. I was beginning to feel nervous.

"Hello, who is this?" I asked, firmly this time.

Still no reply. I grunted and was just about to abort the call when I heard someone speak. A voice that seemed to stroke my spine from top to tailbone.

"It's been a while since I've heard your voice, Tsuzuki-san."

The entire world must have stopped in that moment. My heart began to hurl itself against the wall of my chest, quickening the pace of my breathing. "Muraki…"

"Sharp as always, aren't you?" The doctor asked, still as smooth as ever. He didn't sound the least bit perturbed by what had passed between us one year ago. "Forgive me for my silence but the moment I heard you speak I didn't have the heart to say a word. I've missed hearing your voice, Tsuzuki-san."

My hands were shaking so much; I could barely keep the phone positioned beside my ear.

"YOU!!" I screamed, startling some poor teenage couple that happened to trudge by me at that exact moment. The young man nearly emptied his bladder onto the pavement. "YOU!! YOU'RE STILL ALIVE!!"

Muraki wasn't as nearly impressed with my dramatic tone as I'd hoped. He emitted a deep, weary sigh down the receiver as I gnashed my teeth threateningly into stubs.

"Yes Tsuzuki-san. I am still alive." He said very slowly in the manner someone might address a lobotomy patient. "Unless of course you are speaking to a ghost. Do I _sound _like a ghost to you?" He added sensually.

I considered my options; screaming, summoning, fainting and decided none was too appealing. I continued to grind my teeth, unable to procure even the most articulate of exclamations.

"How did you get this number?! What have you done now?!" I roared, waving my fist around in animist fury. The couple was still watching me from a safe distance. "I demand that you RELEASE whoever you are holding hostage RIGHT NOW and… don't make me COME AFTER you again or… ooooh…" I staggered into the wall, clutching at my suddenly uncooperative belly. Something in the region of my liver was having a violent disagreement with all the liqueur I'd consumed. "Oh God… this is not the best time to be having this conversation…"

"Apparently not…" Muraki said, a hint of possible concern leaking into his affected baritone. "Have you been drinking, Tsuzuki-san? You really should try to limit yourself you know. Enjoy in moderation? If you're not careful-"

"SHUT UP!!" I screamed, immediately regretting it as the volume further aggrieved the drowsy state of my cranium. Damn, I would probably need to enter into detox after this. "You're the last person I wanna hear a lecture from! What the hell do you want?! Where have you been all this time? How in Hades did you manage to get my number and why- HEY! WHY DON'T YOU JUST GET ON AN EXTENSION AND JOIN US?!"

The couple quickly made their escape, accompanied by the amused chuckles of Muraki on the other end of the line. Once they were out of sight, I returned my attention to the call, keeping my voice discreetly veiled to avoid attracting further unwanted attention.

"Why have you called me, Muraki? After everything that happened, why would you even want to?"

I cursed myself inwardly for the way I had phrased this sentence. My tone of voice seemed to encompass remorse on mine own behalf for the prior events. If anything, he was the one who should be feeling uncomfortable and guilty. Regardless how I tried to convince myself, the emotion seemed incapable of shifting itself.

Muraki didn't make it any easier. His voice was an arcane tone of sincere clemency, alluring me to place my trust in him, despite all the past disrepute's. In the drunken state I was in, it felt too much like my ludicrous dreams.

The dreams in which I was comfortable and content to believe him.

"I'd like to see you." Muraki murmured his voice uncharacteristically tentative. "I'm in Tokyo right now. My home. I would like it very much if you would pay me a visit. As for how I managed to acquire your number, I was aided in the task by a small impling in my service that procured the number from the ministry itself. A precarious task, but you are certainly worth it."

He'd summoned an imp and charged it with the task of retrieving information from the Ministry? I couldn't help but blush. He had certainly gone to a lot of trouble.

"Well, I'm flattered." I said intending for it to be delivered sarcastically. I was relieved to find my slurred voice did not fail me. "But, tell me this; are you holding someone I care for hostage, perchance I say no to your invitation, thereby giving you the chance to blackmail me into accompanying you this morning?"

"No."

"Then give me one good reason why I should visit you?" I asked tartly, my voice so cold I was certain I gave him frostbite of the ear.

Muraki couldn't have sounded more obliviously pleasant if he tried. Did you fail to detect the venom in my voice, or were you just ignoring it? As per usual? … Ah, I see, you were ignoring it. Why am I not surprised?

"I simply wanted to give you the option of joining me of your own free will." He replied curtly. "Though of course, you are going to see me tonight whether you want to or not, my dear Tsuzuki-san."

I couldn't help but cast a glance over my shoulder, almost expecting to see a tall white clothed figure standing on the corner bathed in the light from the street lamp. Ridiculous. My imagination was running away with me.

But then again… it _was _Muraki we were talking about. The man could not be expected to be rational. I turned back to the phone.

"So tell me doctor; how exactly is it that you are going to persuade me to visit you? Hmm?"

Shouldn't have gotten cocky. I knew very well that what Muraki wanted, Muraki eventually found a way of getting. Even as the phone line went dead on his response (something suitably self-satisfied and haughty undoubtedly) I felt the aching tug on my immortal substance, spearing hooks drawing my essence together. Even as my feet left the ground, I gasped as the realization hit me.

Muraki was summoning me!

I tried to resist the pull but the wrenching compacting syllables beckoned my energy to answer the call of my name with dynamic persuasion. There was little I could do to escape it. By attempting to counteract the summons my essence was only further expanded and injured, leaving my spiritual mana aching from the exertion.

Not that this stopped me from trying, mind.

No mortal had ever attempted to summon me before. It required a high level of magical efficiency, as strong as or stronger than the guardian that was being summoned itself. Not only that, you must know the name of the undead you are calling and be in possession of some material part of it. I couldn't think of what Muraki had of me, though it could have been something as small as a strand of hair. The bureau had trained me in preparation should a summoning ever occur but I still found the entire experience uncomfortable and exasperating.

For a brief, restless second my form was compacted, stretched outward like gum, and then squeezed through the impartial passageways of the Acasual space to be deposited like a bag of reeking garbage between the walls of a large, mostly bare white room.

Needless to say, I was not a happy Shinigami. Summoning a guardian requires that the being materialize in some form representative of the closest resemblance to our true form. At the outset of our service to the bureau, our essence takes the manifestation of our mortal bodies, in which we conduct our investigations and day-to-day activities.

Summoning reverses the process.

I had materialized in spiritual essence alone, which despite its' noble state, was not wholly desirable. Spiritual essence is essentially, our soul, or spirit and as clichéd as it may sound, the closest physical representation of it was something akin to a wispy cloud that sort of flouts around. The only original thing about it was that each beings essence was slightly different.

I had not assumed this state since the very earliest stages of my service, before I learnt how to maintain my human form.

To elaborate, I had the appearance of a giant bubble. A giant bubble filled with bubble bath. A giant bubble, filled with bubble bath, purple dye and an intricate overlapping wave that circled it every few seconds.

Comely, no?

Dr Kazutaka Muraki became the subject of this purple bubble baths swearing, cursing, ranting, death threats and promise of much violence for the following few minutes. The white haired man, standing discreetly in the shadows of the dark room, just smiled throughout the whole one sided exchange as though a giant bubble threatening to puncture his left lung was nothing out of the ordinary.

It is hardly intimidating, I must confess.

"Are you quite done?" Muraki asked, once I had completed a good five minutes worth of adult rated material. The bubble stopped panting and bounced furiously in the center of the room, the purple light emanating brightly.

"I haven't even started with you!" The bubble growled, the wave looping so erratically that it seemed set to shoot off of the axis and drown the murderous bastard. "After all that you have done, you still have the nerve to do _this? _WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!"

"Now that-" He said, a smile flashing in the darkness. "Is a source of much debate. My friend Oriya has often gone hoarse in an attempt to answer it."

The bubble was not amused. It drew itself up.

"You're insane." I established for his benefit. "And you'd better release me right this second or _so help me _I will drip my essence all over this expensive carpet. Just see if I don't!"

Muraki merely straightened his glasses, calm against all sagacity. My God, here I had just threatened to decimate his undoubtedly 18th century fancy-smancy name hundred-thousand yen carpet and the man doesn't so much as bat an eyelid! I could summon up Byakko to go on a rampage of Godzilla proportions through his house and he'd probably just pour a cup of tea and offer me a biscuit.

Or he'd get off on it. He seemed to be sexually aroused by displays of power.

"Are you going to listen to me or not?" He finally asked in a world-weary tone of voice. I noticed that he seemed to be clutching his abdomen a lot; in the very place that I had stabbed him.

I calmed down enough to commute my essence together and transmute into human shape. Gravity set in and my feet touched the floor, trench coat hem brushing the carpet threads. I was still feeling moderately woozy from the alcohol but the summons had redirected much of my physical properties, clearing a large portion of my liver. Unfortunately it had also taken care of my stomach and I was now starving again. I actively sought to ignore my growling belly and focused my attention on the doctor, still standing back in the darkness. His right eye glowed from somewhere beneath the arch of hair, falling across a half of his pale face almost artistically.

I pursed my lips. "You fool. After all that happened in Kyoto, after everything you have done, you call me back? You have seen what I am capable of Muraki. Do _not _push me again, hear? I am no longer tolerant of you or your jibes."

My belligerent words were somewhat ruined by Muraki puffing out his cheeks blowing a loud raspberry. It was the single most bizarre thing I had ever seen the doctor do, considering his decorous personality that is. I was taken aback.

"Oh, do get over yourself, Tsuzuki-san." The doctor crossed the room to where I was standing. I had to consciously reign myself in as he entered my sight clearly for the first time in months.

He was as beautiful as I remembered. The moonlight darting between the half shielded curtains, cast his strong jaw line into shades that complimented his high cheekbones and ashen skin perfectly. A mercury wave of hair arched down over his face, matching the color of his one visible eye perfectly. Imposing as always, the doctor was a large man, easily six foot three, whilst I was only 5'10. To him, I suppose, I could have been little more than a doll, cradled in his strong arms. Lifted to that broad expanse of chest, framed by wide shoulders… Physically intimidating on top of everything else. A modern day Jack the Ripper.

In all honesty, the first time I had met him, I had felt an undeniable attraction. Were one unaware of his more sinister dealings, like the innocent Tsubaki, one could easily be taken in by him. Muraki was not just an attractive man; his features were striking. The beauty to stop someone dead in their tracks is something that continues to astound me even to this day. How two perfect strangers can meet and one entrance the other so wholly, so _completely _that he forgets where he is and what he is doing. Your entire universe suddenly centers on this one person.

When I had shook Muraki's hand, he left me with not the fading memory of a rosy complexion but a stain so deep I had no hope to remove it. I had remembered his name perfectly, recalled vivid details of his face, the part in his hair, the way in _which _it was parted, eye color, voice tone, mannerisms. His skin was disturbingly pale and flawless, no rosy blush to be seen such as I was so partial to. There was an intense, eloquent taint to his visible eye and his inappropriately sensual mouth seemed constantly on the verge of laughing. Laughter of a defile nature that is, cold laughter, sadly distant and seceded. His nose was perfectly straight and aristocratic; an ode to a lineage long since lost to him.

I remembered these details perfectly because I had _wanted _to remember. Like Tsubaki I had been instantly captivated.

I was utterly driven and compelled to react to him. Needless to say, I would have sent him postcards should he have turned out to be an upstanding citizen and not a psychopathic dick.

Muraki hadn't changed since the last time I had seen him. Except for one, tiny, minor detail… I couldn't help but nitpick this insignificant flaw as he stepped up close to me, smiling a gentle smile so unlike him…

"My God! You've gotten fat, haven't you?"

Just call me Subtle-san. Muraki's smile dropped like a bucket of ice water, a twitch appearing in the uppermost crease of his left eye. Clearly this was a "Sensitive-Point™." I immediately wished I'd shut my big mouth.

Muraki was amazingly composed about the remark however. He straightened the folds of his yukata and readjusted his glasses, though neither needed any treatment whatsoever. This was evidently a soothing mechanism for him.

"No…" He said slowly and LOUDLY. "I have _not _put on weight, Tsuzuki-san. It is undoubtedly the cut of the yukata, the width of my shoulders causes the material to amplify my contours."

This was an outright _lie_ and I could see that my observation had clearly rattled him. I smiled to myself, cruelly pleased I had found at least one method of unnerving my amorous enemy. For almost a year, Muraki had easily instituted technique's to demoralize me, whether it be my past guilt or inability to elude his sexual advances. Now, I had one small detail to use against him and it felt _great._

I cocked my head to the side, pretending to study him fervently. Muraki was a man in his early thirties and as a physician, I'm sure he hadn't much time to work out, so of course he'd have a bit of adipose tissue in the usual places. He did indeed seem to have gained some weight since our last meeting, a fact that very well may have been attributed to a long retreat in hospital. I nodded thoughtfully.

"Are you quite sure about that doctor? Because I'm positively certain… that you were not nearly that _corpulent _three months ago. Particularly around the waist."

Muraki bristled, trying to maintain his cool. I could see him developing a life-long complex on the spot: _"Do I really look portly? Do I?"_

As I stood there gloating, feeling suddenly much better about death in general, Muraki began to composedly light a cigarette. He drew on the emphysema riddled cylinder like a teenager with a joint and then blew a funnel of smoke from the corner of his mouth, without even removing the cigarette. His cool eyes met mine.

Then, with a sigh, he pulled open the kimono.

Oh God.

Full frontal Muraki.

Naturally, as I had not been suspecting this little… ahem, _unveiling, _I went somewhat into shock. Meaning I screamed like a little girl, covered my face with my hands and tried to spin a 180 degree angle as my face flushed like a burgundy sun burnt cherry. The point had been made however.

Muraki was definitely not as toned as he once was but he certainly wasn't _fat_. Rather, he had a very…um… healthy, robust body. His chest and slightly rounded stomach (well, he was a man in his thirties, so it couldn't be _all _perfect) were defined in the faint moonlight, revealing substantial muscle patterns shifting beneath alabaster skin like pulsing veins. The night credited perfect compliment to his body, his nudity expressing confidently the wide chest and shoulders, arrowing downward into the sensual slope of his ample hips and long legs.

A beautiful, yet wholly human piece of art.

That one glance had also been enough to inform me of Muraki's desire, endorsed by my presence that night. I swallowed heavily and licked my lips, trying not to envision how having that man inside of me would have felt, if Hisoka had not annulled my wager on the Queen Camellia.

Oh for the love of Hades, would you all stop laughing at me! I'm doing the best I can! And yes Watari, I'm aware that I am blushing you don't need to point it out to me.

I kept my back discretely turned until Muraki retied the cord of his yukata. I was only aware of his modesty until he had stepped up close behind me, threading his arms beneath my shoulders as seamlessly as a thread through needle. My face flushed even redder as he straightened his knees, slotting himself into place against my back with a soft murmur of satisfaction, allowing me to feel his passion without the slightest bit of inclination on his own behalf.

Something came to me then, a factor I had overlooked as a result of my embarrassment.

Muraki's body had been covered with marks, deep red marks not unlike a bruising or branding. They etched across his body in haphazard patterns, as though some cockeyed child had gone at him with a crayon. I had missed them at first, because the collar of the kimono was sanctioned much too close to his neck. Even so I could now see them covering his hands, arms and neck, an unsystematic vice of which was all too familiar to me, though not in reference to Muraki.

They were the lines of the curse he had left on Hisoka.

I was distracted from my thoughts by Muraki, whose hot breath upon my ear snapped me sadistically back into reality, awakening a whole series of previously undetected desires. The feeling was odious, insufferable… and all my own. How I detested myself for my failure to extinguish this physical covet for the man who had killed so many. The man who had murdered my partner and many others in cold blood.

"Do I seem alive to you?" The doctor asked sumptuously. I shivered as I felt his hands slide across my waist in opulent affection. Stroking my own hands and tracing the curves of my fingers as though inviting them to intertwine with his own.

"_Come play Asato Tsuzuki…"_

"You can feel me can't you? I'm real. Real… and very much alive." He purred gently and lowered his mouth so close to my ear, that his tongue wet my skin with each word. "You must be well aware that I am more than impressed by your display in Kyoto, my darling. But… one must not lose their modesty. The wise eagle hides its' talons, after all. Keep yourself humble as you have always been and you are that much more sublime, Tsuzuki-san."

I whimpered, trying not to let his contact get the better of me. It was dangerous and at the same time… exciting to have him this close.

"As soon as I return to the ministry, you'll have the entire summons section on your ass." I promised. "There won't be any slipping away this time, I can assure you."

I felt him smile into my hair, sighing as though the thought of a million Shinigami on his tail was simply electrifying. "Lovely. I could certainly use the exercise."

He raised a hand sharpish and I jerked back, closer to the wall of his chest, afraid that he was going to strike me. I certainly should have expected it, having bluntly accused the man of being fat.

But instead, he merely traced the pads of his fingertips across my lips. I couldn't help but tremble at the contact, my entire essence palpitating.

"Muraki…"

"Tsuzuki-san, would you please be so kind as to hear me out?" His voice was soft, his attention apparently focused on the examination of my face. "I have an offer of which I'm sure you would be most interested."

"An offer?" I repeated unnecessarily. It was difficult to concentrate when Muraki had started to kiss the skin on the back of my neck. He chuckled breathlessly, his lips making the softest noise as they parted from my flesh. Shamelessly, I found him more enticing by the minute.

"Would you like to hear what it is?"

I shook myself mentally, pulling out of his grasp with all the will I could muster. He didn't appear the least bit surprised at my actions. My refusal to give in to his ministrations had been a long running game since the moment we'd first met.

"Anything you say to me is not worth my time!" I shouted, somewhat losing the intended forceful effect as my voice pitched horribly. Muraki raised a slender eyebrow. "I don't have any reason to trust you!"

Muraki considered this for a moment as he retraced his steps across the room to where his cigarette sat smoldering in an ashtray. It had almost withered down to the filter. Nevertheless, he picked it up and drew on it thoughtfully, his aesthetic face angled toward the ceiling and his cryptic thoughts.

"Did you perhaps consider that that is exactly what I had planned to offer you?"

I bit down on my already prepared response as a cold chill rushed through my body. This all felt familiar somehow…

I realized it in a flash. My dreams…

_When I... dreamed of you, Muraki, you came to me as a being prepared to repent for his crimes and dedicate your life to rectifying all that you had come into contact with. In my arrogance, I believed it was a promise you made with the sole purpose of gaining my trust. You extended good will in order to see me smile, to make me happy._

I banished the thought immediately. The rationality of a dream was not the basis to make a decision of such magnitude. This was not a place where I would simply smile and everything would be all right. This was reality. And in this place, Muraki was a murderer, whose word could not be trusted.

"A reason to trust you? Ha! Now's there's a laugh!" I said. "You can drop the act here and now, Kazutaka Muraki, I have all the information I'll ever need and want to know about you. And a dash extra now, thanks to your indecent exposure. As a bonus, I know that you're alive and kicking, so to speak and in a few hours, I'll be shouting it from the Ministry's roof. So, if I was you I would scarper on out of here quick smart and find someplace suitably dark and damp to hide. This conversation is herby, over." I took on the semblance of dogs' ears and tail, turning my face skyward as some indication of my finality.

Muraki stubbed out the cigarette. "Tsuzuki-san…"

"Nope!" His words were cut off by my big bushy tail shoved into his face. "Talk to the tail, because the face don't wanna hear it!"

Muraki rectified this situation by grabbing me by the base of my tail and pulling me back against his body. The act should not have been sensual but his hand so close to my rear, made it entirely so. My ears flattened themselves against my head and I whined my discomfort.

"Tsuzuki-san… I know that you saw those marks on my body." Muraki stated as I struggled in his grip. "Those marks are a curse known as The _Shukusatsu_. Someone bestowed it on me a long time ago. It enforces my demonic hunger, my need to kill and take life. If I fail to sate it, the curse inflicts extreme discomfort upon me. Unbearable agony to both my mind and body. The hunger becomes so great that I eventually lose all control over it and my brutality in murder increases twofold."

I shuddered as his left hand came up to caress my chin. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because…" He said. "There is only one way to sate the curse, beloved. I _must _murder, I _must _indulge in violence. I _must _feed that hunger. But I can lessen the burden of the curse by spreading the mark, by passing it on to others. It is a virus." He paused meaningfully. "I have discovered a method to transmit the _Shukusatsu_. I passed a portion of it out of myself and into another suitable host."

I gasped. "Hisoka!"

Muraki nodded and slowly released me. I watched as he turned his back on me and slowly slid the kimono down his shoulders, revealing a wide stretch of his broad back. The straight, mysterious lining coursed over much of his skin, except for one section – the flesh here was as smooth and flawless as the surface of an egg, stretching down from his shoulder blade to the swell of one buttock. The implication was obvious; this encryption was now stamped into my partner.

"The curse on that boy is but one single branch of the _Shukusatsu_." He explained, slipping the kimono back atop his shoulders and turning to face me. "It can be seen alone on the anniversary of the night in which it was originally cast. The anniversary obviously, is tonight."

He paused meaningfully for a moment, allowing the extended silence to add weight to his words. I contemplated his implications as he crossed the room and deposited the cigarette filter into the ashtray from which he had retrieved it. There was some sort of revealing simile between the doctor and the burnt out cylinder, but my thoughts were too distracted to stint on it.

Muraki sighed as he tilted his head sidelong to gaze at me. For a minute or so, he appeared content to simply watch me in this manner, unbothered by any of the predominant physical desires that were so evident in his naked form. His firm nipples, his insistent manhood…

I found myself blushing again, and like some sort of guided signal, Muraki had crossed the room and wrapped his arm around my lower waist, lifting my body upward to meet the wall of his chest. Despite the layers between us, I was still able to feel the erect buds press to my chest and the erroneous beating of his heart, playing to the rhythm of his suddenly much heavier breath. I lost all sense in what we had been discussing as Muraki's pale, yet sumptuous lips grazed the swell of my left cheek, applying the most exploratory of kisses upon the skin. I stifled what threatened to become a keen sigh, as his free hand moved up, his long nails pressing into the opposite side of my face in the semblance of a lover. He trailed kisses up to my temple, each moist warmth contact becoming more frenzied as I shivered in his hold. It became all too clear to me, that Muraki was starved for contact. He was like a child whom had just awoken from a bad dream.

It makes a lot more sense to me now; I can say that with astute clarity.

When he appeared to have satisfied his desperate craving and slowed his passionate kisses to a lingering brush of his lips, Muraki rested his forehead to my own, tilting my head up in order to study me. I didn't want to meet his eyes, afraid that such intimacy would only entice me into something I would be unable to pull away from. But the heavy sigh he expelled was so… weak that the ignorant part of me took pity and I accepted his silver eye within my own.

I was wrong to ever think that Muraki had not changed since Kyoto. Looking at him in that moment, wrapped up tightly in his arms as though I were the most perfect treasure in the world, I could see how far he had fallen. He was like one of the roses he loved so much; once so vibrant, now dried up and wilted. He seemed older somehow. Weary.

We stood like that for a while; he with his arms around me, rocking me gently as I relaxed halfheartedly against him, praying to any of the Twelve Gods that he would not try to kiss me. In my tipsy state, I knew it would be difficult to resist. Though still a virgin, even after a good ninety years, I enjoyed kissing a great deal and for all physical purposes, Muraki possessed unrivalled skill when it came to his lips. He had kissed me before, albeit briefly and I'd pushed him away not a second after his lips had met mine. I still remember the cold cutting clap of my heart however; the soles of my feet tingling…

My greatest weakness, I suppose, is anything that affords me pleasure. Be it sweets, drinking or kissing; if it came to any of these things, I would literally be unable to hold myself back.

And this simply would not do. I know full well that I would regret it in the morning. Kissing the man who killed your partner is a big 'no-no.'

Muraki finally spoke. "I will be honest with you Tsuzuki-san. I did not just call you here just because I wanted to see you."

I rolled my eyes. "Well now, _there's _a shock."

"I called you here because I want you to trust me. I am fully aware that I have given you very little reason to do so. Be that as it may, I cannot change the past and I cannot change the man who I am. I enjoy killing. It gives me pleasure, it gives me _peace. _What does not sit well with me however, Tsuzuki-san is realizing that my actions cause you to see me in a negative light. And that is something that I can no longer tolerate. In fact, it drives me crazy."

The hand on my waist tightened so that it found itself hooked about my hip, his lower arm locked into the hallow of my back. My eyes widened as his free arm wrapped around my shoulders and pulled me tight against him, allowing his face to fall upon the crook of my neck. He embraced me in such a tender, devoted way. A way in which defied all that this creature had come to represent. Muraki was loath to be seen as weak in any sort of circumstance and the emotional need he was exemplifying now, was a thorough contradiction of this. I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to hug him back. He might have taken this as a doting 'come hither' and tried to take my clothes off or something. Not to mention I was somewhat reluctant to comfort self confirmed serial killers. I chose to simply stare straight ahead at the white walls as his hands caressed unknown patterns into my back, tracing a scripture of silent words and whispered allusions. Muraki whispered into my ear; his breath hot and suggestive.

"You have done something to me, Tsuzuki-san. Something I never considered possible. Whenever you come into proximity with me, let alone touch me as you are now, I find the curse becomes tranquil, lulled into amity by your very presence. You free me from the desire, the ache, the necessity of restraining my demonic presence by taking life from others." He sighed thoughtfully, one hand cupping the crown of my head as he trailed the side of his face up against mine. The skin-to-skin contact was more than enough to shatter my resolve to tolerate his advancements. I gave a momentary, persuasive struggle but Muraki's will was more insistent than my own. He simply pulled me against him tighter and for my efforts; I was awarded with the feeling of his erection pressing against my upper thigh. I cursed myself inwardly and tried not to let him see the tears swelling in the corners of my eyes. Muraki ignored my discomfort and simply smiled, obviously enjoying his feeling of dominance over me. I saw the glint of his artificial eye beneath his bangs and I had to stop myself from spitting in it.

"Here's the deal." He said. "I'm putting myself on a 'good-behavior-bond'. I would like to have more contact with you and owing to your… particular feelings about the taking of human life, if this should imply that I must forego killing henceforth, than I will gladly do it. Be mindful however, that I need to be in close proximity to you whenever I feel the urge, as you are able to remedy me of it. Do you understand, Tsuzuki-san?"

I was about to tell him where exactly he could shove his proximity, when he suddenly thrust his index and middle finger into my mouth. He grinned humorously as he used them to separate my jaws as widely as possible. I garbled in protest.

"I know what you're about to say," he intoned, chuckling as I brought both my hands up to attempt to force his fingers out of my maw. "You are truly noble to a fault, Mr. Tsuzuki. You would be unable to even consider the possibility of my vow of righteousness, should I not first extend a token gesture of goodwill, correct?"

I nodded as much as I was able.

"Then let me finish making my offer, hmm?" He continued to grin as I struggled not to choke on his invading digits. Once I'd confirmed my willingness to listen, he retrieved his fingers from where they had been jammed against the back of my throat. I gagged and flushed my tongue around the interior of my mouth a little, trying to expel the dry, intrusive feeling. Muraki made a very insincere 'aww' noise and rubbed his thumb over my lips.

"I do apologize for that, my darling. But I am quite frustrated and you are simply not making my efforts any easier, now are you?"

"You're frustrated?!" I choked. "Here I am, minding my own business in the early hours of the morning, when suddenly I'm yanked right out of the street by a man who, when he's not murdering innocent people, is trying to either slither into my pants or cut my head off! So forgive me if-" Muraki raised his fingers threateningly and I cut off my rant sharpish. He gave me a very conceited smile and patted my cheek.

"Good boy," He said as though I were a dog learning a new trick. I had a feeling that this was a trick he was going to enjoy teaching me a great deal. "Now, where was I? Oh yes. Trust. I was thinking Tsuzuki-san, that despite my inability to withdraw my past discretions, I may be in some small way, be able to remedial them. Mediocre efforts at best, as my actions are far too advanced in order to atone for. However, for some sake of familial harmony Mr. Tsuzuki, if it will give you even the slightest inclination to trust me; I would like to take back the part of the curse I placed upon that boy."

"His name is Hisoka." I mumbled, but my rebuke was very empty. He had tweaked my interest. "You can take back the curse?"

"Certainly." He replied, as he caressed my cheek with the very tips of his knuckles. It tickled my skin a little, this temperate action. "As easily as I am able to pick up a jigsaw piece and place it back within the puzzle. The curse will reattach itself to me."

"But… if what you say is true… about the curse empowering your demonic desire, won't this only make it stronger?"

The doctor made a placid, yet definitive nod of his head. "A small price to pay for your trust, my love."

The dog-ears re-emerged from my head, like soldiers rising from a trench after a shoot out and I gave Muraki a good long stare. To be honest, I couldn't see the harm in accepting his proposal now. If he truly did desire to gain my trust, I would be performing a great service to the current living population of the world by helping him restrain his 'killer instinct.' And if it managed to free Hisoka from the curse, then so much the better. Angry though I was with the man, I'd always found him to be somewhat reliable, at least when it came to his attraction to me. If I used this weakness, his passionate infatuation with me, he would be able to be kept under close observation by the bureau. His actions monitored. Whether or not he was as corrupt as before remained to be seen.

I placed a finger considerately on my chin and waved my tail from side to side. "And if you do this, take away Hisoka's curse; I will have a reason to trust you, yes?"

Muraki shrugged, his hand sliding down my back towards my bottom. I swished my tail a little more insistently, hoping this was enough to dissuade him. "That is entirely up to you."

"Well, in that case, we'll see." I said, pulling myself out of his arms just as his hand found it's' mark atop one of my buttocks. He distributed a little squeeze to the muscle before releasing me, leaving my face a deep mauve I'm sure he found enchanting. Muraki smiled and raised both hands beside his head, the paragon of innocence.

"I'll leave it entirely up to you, my dear." He repeated as I patted my poor violated posterior. "If you are satisfied with my gift however, I would very much like for you to join me on Friday night at this restaurant, right here in Tokyo." He handed me a business card, designed with formal gold calligraphy. "Ask for me at the door. Seven-thirty. I will be more than happy to cover expenses."

Hot damn, dinner _and _a date. I tucked the card into my trench coat pocket. "Like I said; we'll see doctor." I looked around, drinking everything in for the first time. "This is your home?"

Muraki seemed rather emboldened now. He nodded, straightening his glasses out of habit. "It is."

"It's nice." I admitted. "What room is this? Seems kinda bare, not to mention cold."

"This is a multi-purpose room, used mostly for magical measures such as summoning, spell casting, channeling, invoking and so on. As such, you should be most fortunate that I did not summon you into a pentagram, which would have left you helpless against my dealings."

I raised an eyebrow. "Then why didn't you?"

He looked mildly annoyed. "Because I want you to _trust_ me, Tsuzuki-san. Summoning you here was a great enough inconvenience, incapacitating you was not going to win me any favors."

"You got that right!" I snorted. I took another liberal look around. The room was about two thousand square feet, quite an expenditure for a 'magical measures' room. If he could afford to waste such space on a tinkering area, it made me wonder what the rest of the house was like.

When I mentioned this to Muraki, he seemed all set to play tour guide.

"This house was built in the late 1700's," He garbled with a misty sort of look in his cat like eye. "It has been in my family for sixteen generations. I am the last, of course. There are thirty servants employed here to take care of the house and surrounding land, many of which have been employed here since I was a child."

All of a thousand years for all I knew. I nodded and pretended I was interested, a tactic much practiced in light of Tatsumi's annual 'Department Funding' meetings.

"The land was divided into blocks forty years ago by my father and sold to other families, cutting back on our own monetary responsibilities, allowing us to focus our funds more fully on developmental surgery."

I smothered a yawn and wondered if I could make it to the window before he noticed me. I was just starting to edge away from the center of the room, when he glanced over at me, his eyes verily dancing.

"It was around that point when a priest was called in to exorcise the house." He told me happily. "An unsuccessful exorcism as it were. This house is a case book study history for haunting."

I froze, one leg extended with the toe pointed like a ballerina in mid step. A tiny influx of mild panic turned the blood cold in my veins.

"Ghosts you say?"

Muraki's window didn't pose much of a dilemma following _that _little announcement. I'm certain I gave the good doctor something to chortle about as I hurled myself through the frame work without even touching the surface, plummeted three floors down, then ran from the house screaming hysterically; not from the former psycho-killer, but from the _mention_ of a ghost. Being an undead myself, you would think I would relinquish any former stigmas on the grounds of wispy white beings floating about in sheets and moaning like a wolf with period pain. I know this and yet, I don't care. I don't like ghosts. They scare me. They've scared me since I was a little boy and they continue to scare me until this day. At the mention of the 'possible woman ghost' on the Queen Camellia, Hisoka had to forcefully wrestle me out of a life boat. Even then I nearly jumped overboard wearing a life vest, prepared to risk gale force winds and sharks, if only it meant I wouldn't have to face off with a see through specter. If Muraki had any idea of the extension of my ghost phobia, he would have done well never to mention it. I swore then and there, as I ran through the chilly frost bitten streets of Tokyo that I would not be dragged back into that house by anything short of Armageddon. Even then, it would be a definite last refuge.

Somehow, I made it back to my apartment in _Sakura Zensen_, my heart still throbbing in my ears. I had survived a brush with zombies, monsters Muraki _and _a haunted house. All in all, I felt pretty accomplished and decided to congratulate myself by texting Watari. I don't think he would have particularly cared at that point in time, but I felt as though I needed to brag to someone.

Once I had sent the text, I unchanged from my suit and dressed for bed. I collapsed in an exhausted, tipsy heap upon the covers, my hand tossed ineloquently across my forehead.

I found myself gazing at the ceiling.

Muraki wanted peace. Wanted and desired to sate the demonic side of him that was starved for a hunger I had condemned within me my whole life.

Were we really so different after all?

There was something very revealing in all of this, but at the time I was much too weary to figure it out. I decided to wait until tomorrow and find out if Muraki could indeed be trusted with his words. If Hisoka's curse was vanquished, it might be worth attending dinner with him.

And if all went well, the killer known as Kazutaka Muraki may become a man dedicated as once he had been, to saving lives. Saving lives without taking them.

A good doctor. A good man.

"_Tsuzuki-san, I vow never to act in a way that would dishearten you. I don't want to see you sad."_

A world in which there never needed to be a reason to believe in someone. Trust without the extension of proof. A million faces and a million lives all passing me by at a million miles per hour.

None of this made sense.

The worst and the best night of my life. When everything ended for so many people, I was stepping through that door that for so long had been closed to me.

The moon bled again.

_**- EC -**_


End file.
